Beecheh Memorial 



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BEECHER MEMORIAL 



CONTEMPORANEOUS TRIBUTES 



TO THE 



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MEMORY OF HENRY WARD BEECHER 



COMPILED AND EDITED BY 



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EDWARD Wr^OK 



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PRIVATELY PRINTED 

BROOKLYN, NEW YORK Y>y 
1887 



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THE LIBRARY 
or CONORBSsI 

WASHINGTON] 



Copyright, 1887, 
By Edward W. Bok, 



t/Jll rights reserved. 



The De Vinne Press. 



INDEX OF CONTRIBUTORS. 

PAGB 

Introduction Hon. Edwards Pierrepont vii 

Allegorical Design William H. Beard Facing page i 

Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes i 

General W. T. Sherman 3 

The Right Hon. William E. Gladstone, M. P 4 

Admiral David D. Porter 5 

Mr. John Greenleaf Whittier 6 

Right Rev. Frederic W. Farrar, D. D., F. R. S 6 

Miss Edith M. Thomas 7 

Rev. Robert Collyer, D. D 7 

Mr. Edwin Booth 8 

General John C. Fremont 8 

Mrs. Lucretia R. Garfield 9 

Mr. Will Carleton 10 

Hon. John Sherman 11 

The Duke of Argyll 12 

Rev. W. H. H. Murray , 13 

Mr. Andrew Carnegie 14 

Miss Rose Elizabeth Cleveland 16 

Signor Tommaso Salvini 17 

Hon. Rutherford B. Hayes 18 

M. AuGUSTE Bartholdi 19 

Rev. T. De Witt Talmage, D. D 20 

Mr. George William Curtis , 21 

Mr. Lawrence Barrett 22 

Mrs. Julia Ward Howe 23 

The Marchioness Adelaide Ristori Del Grillo 25 

Hon. George F. Edmunds 25 

The President of The United States 27 

Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll 28 

Hon. Hamilton Fish 32 

Mr. George W. Cable 33 

Rev. Professor David Swing , 34 

Miss Emma Abbott 35 



IV 

PAGE 

Miss Lucy Larcom 36 

Mr. George W. Childs 37 

Hon. Alonzo B. Cornell 38 

General J. M. Schofield 39 

Mr. Dion Boucicault 39 

Mr. Noah Brooks 40 

M. Doctor Louis Pasteur 41 

Rev. Theodore L. Cuyler, D. D 41 

Mrs. Sara J. Lippincott (Grace Greenwood) 42 

Hon. S. S. Cox 44 

Professor Alexander Graham Bell 45 

Hon. David Dudley Field 46 

Hon. MuRAT Halstead 46 

Rev. Newman Hall, D. D., LL. D 47 

General William S. Rosecrans 47 

Rev. William Ormiston, D. D., LL. D ^ 48 

Dr. George H. Hepworth 49 

Mr. W. W. Corcoran 50 

Hon. J. B. Grinnell 50 

Hon. RoscoE Conkling 51 

Mrs. J. C. Croly (Jenny June) 51 

Hon. Preston B. Plumb 52 

Hon. Hamilton Fish 53 

Rev. Edward McGlynn, D. D 53 

Mrs. Laura C. Holloway 54 

Hon. Charles Stewart Parnell, M. P 55 

Mr. Henry George 55 

Rev. Lyman Abbott, D. D 56 

Hon. Hannibal Hamlin 57 

Rev. Mark Hopkins, D. D., LL. D 57 

Baron Bernhard Von Tauchnitz 59 

Mr. Anthony Comstock 59 

General James Longstreet 60 

Lieutenant A. W. Greely, U. S. A 60 

Dr. Bernard O'Reilly 61 

General O. O. Howard 61 

Rev. Samuel Francis Smith, D. D 62 

Dr. Edward Eggleston 64 

Mr. Joaquin Miller 64 

Rev. John W. Chadwick 65 

Miss Laura D. Bridgman 66 



V 

PAGE 

Rev. C. A. Bartol, D. D 66 

General Neal Dow ... 67 

Mr. John T. Raymond 68 

Miss Elizabeth Blackwell, M. D 68 

Mr. Bill Nye 69 

Mr. Eastman Johnson 70 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

HIS MANY-SIDED CHARACTER AND GENIUS. 

Early Days at College. ... Roswell D. Hitchcock, D. D. 71 

His Intellectual Brilliancy Charles Dudley Warner. ... 73 

His Universal Philanthropy Henry Bergh 75 

As A Humorist Robert J, Biirdette 77 

His Broad Humanities Octavius Brooks Frothingham 79 

Certain Perceptional Characteristics William A. Ham7nond, M. D. 82 

As Preacher and Speaker Philip Schaff, D. D 86 

Appreciation of Art M. F. H. de Haas 89 

His Services to the Country Washington Gladden, D. D. 90 

His Fame in Foreign Climes Philip Phillips 92 

Love of Nature and Versatility John Burroughs 93 

As A Friend of the Jew Professor Felix Adler 96 

Early and Late Impressions Ho>i. Andrew D. White 98 

Sympathy With the Shakers Elder F. W. Evans 100 



REMINISCENCES AND INCIDENTS. 

Mr. E. P. Roe , 103 

Dr. George H. Hepworth 104 

Mr. Melville D. Landon (Eli Perkins) 105 

Dr. Edward Eggleston 106 

Mr. Andrew Carnegie 107 

Mrs. Jessie Benton Fremont 107 



NOTE. 

The acknowledgments of the Editor are due 
to the many distinguished contributors to this 
Memorial for the cordiality with which his re- 
quest for their cooperation has in every instance 
been received, and the cheerful readiness which 
has characterized each response. His indebted- 
ness is likewise acknowledged to Major James 

B. Pond, for many years Mr. Beecher's warm 
and trusted friend, and to Mr. William J. Bok, 
his fellow-worker in this labor of love. 

The cordial assistance and approval of Mrs. 
Henry Ward Beecher and of Colonel William 

C. Beecher are also gratefully acknowledged. 

p. W. B. 
Brooklyn, June i, 1887. 



INTRODUCTION, 

HENRY WARD BEECHER was the purest type of the robust free 
American. He was born in New England, and there received his 
early education. But he studied theology in Ohio, and at the age of 
twenty-four commenced preaching in Indiana, when that State was 
part of the "wild West," and there he preached for ten years. This 
had much to do in shaping his ideas, and in giving such boundless 
freedom to the expression of his thoughts. 

We all believe in the blood of horses and dogs, and it has always 
seemed to me that heredity in man was likely to be governed by much 
the same laws. With Mr. Beecher this appeared especially trite. His 
compact muscle, his remarkable physique, his impulsive nature, and 
his vital force were pure inheritances from that ancestry of which he 
was ever proud. He a6ted out his nature, and whatever he did was 
done easily, because naturally. He never tried to be a polished scholar, 
nor did he aim to be careful about the delicate conventionalities of 
aristocratic life. If he had been bred in England, he would have been 
a power at the hustings or in the House of Commons. But Henry 
Ward Beecher sitting, in bishop's robes with lawn sleeves, in the House 
of Lords would not have seemed at home. 

His fertility of inteUe^l was amazing. For full fifty years he talked 
to the public, and no man ever said so much and repeated himself so 
little. His humor was immense, as any one who looked into his face 
could see. He was of an artistic temperament, and would have made 
a great actor. He had a vast heart, with broad benevolence flowing 
over the human race. He loved men, women, and children, of what- 
ever race or creed. His personal magnetism made him interesting 
always. His combustion was Spontaneous. He was at his best when 
with blind allonge he threw himself into the tempest of his thoughts. 
He read much and rapidly, and observed all sorts of men, women, 
and things. He stored his mind more by observation than by study or 



Vlll 

reflexion. I do not think he ever did reflect; he felt. He talked 
and adted as he was impelled to talk and a6t. He was never restrained 
in his utterances by the least concern about subsequent criticism. He 
used words to express his thoughts. He once told me that he was like 
the ''town pump/' dry in summer, needing to wait the autumn rains 
before he could pour out afuU stream. 

Mr. ^eecher's imagination was large; his hope was boundless. 
Kind and sympathetic to the last degree, he wished well to the world 
generally. He abhorred oppression everywhere, was resolute without 
caution, and could conceal nothing. He was always to be found on 
the side of liberty, humanity, and equal rights. He liked to call 
things by their right names. He hated the word "kleptomania." He 
was told of a rich woman who stole costly laces from a counter, — 
the shopkeeper said nothing, but sent his biU to her husband with a 
polite note. Not many days afterward, a poor woman stole a little 
cheap frock for her child, and was sent to prison. The one a5l was 
called "kleptomania," the other "larceny." This exasperated Mr. 
Beecher beyond measure. 

The brave and efficient services which Henry Ward Beecher rendered 
in the cause of imperiled freedom, both in England and America, 
when our skies were darkest, need not here be dwelt upon. They will 
be forever gratefully remembered by aU good men, and pass into the 
imperishable history of the time. 

If, in the Judgment Hall, Osiris weighs aU the deeds of men, he will 
find a heavy balance of good to the credit of Henry Ward Beecher. 

The following memorial to this illustrious man, to which so many 
eminent persons have contributed, may fitly serve to perpetuate the 
memory of one of the most gifted products of free government in 
America. 

EDWARDS PIERREPONT. 
'New York City, 




Living, above the clouds he soared; 
From realms of upper air 
His mighty eloquence he poured — 
Dying, he lingers there. 

william h. beard. 



IN MEMORIAM 



HENRY WARD BEECHER 



DR. OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 

ONE is not likely to forget the day when he first saw Henry 
Ward Beecher. I first met the great speaker and teacher at 
Pittsfield, Massachusetts, somewhere about the year 1855, — ^ ^^^tle 
later or earlier perhaps. He came there to preach on the day of the 
week which at home 1 had heard called Sunday, and at Andover 
and in other rural districts " the Sabbath." Though the day was 
not known in our Cambridge household by its false Jewish name, 
it was observed in the old Puritan fashion. On Saturday playthings 
were put away at ''sundown," all voices were hushed, and all 
features subdued and sobered. I had never got over the saddening 
effect of this early discipline ; indeed, I have hardly recovered from 
it to this day. When Mr. Beecher appeared on Sunday at Pittsfield, 
joyous and radiant, it seemed as if the leaden cloud which had hung 
over the day for so many years had given way to a burst of sun- 
shine. No long faces, no melancholy tones, no fear of a smile, or 
even a laugh, no constraint, but, on the contrary, a wholesome, 
natural, cheerful welcome to the day of rest. He moved as briskly 
as if it were a week-day, talked as pleasantly as if it were a holiday, 
was good-natured, not worrying over his sermon, playful at times ; 
in short, was himself, — one of God's happy, strong, useful servants 
and sons, who really believed that his Maker was a kind and reason- 
able Father. 



In the pulpit, Mr. Beecher was the same unaffected, robust, out- 
spoken, clear-headed, sensible man, with a gift of fervid eloquence 
and a power of effective illustration which swayed the multitudes 
before him as the wind sways the leaves of the forest. He never 
addressed men as if they were convicts, born rebels, and would-be 
devils, but as brothers, to be helped, to be led, to be raised upward 
into the higher atmosphere of good thoughts and good companion- 
ship. What a comfort it was, after hearing a bloodless invalid 
preaching **as a dying man to dying men," to hear a sound, strong- 
bodied, healthy minister of the Gospel speak with virile force and 
ringing accents, as a living man to living men ! I never forgot that 
Sunday. He did more than any other preacher had ever done to 
exorcise the demon of dullness who had brooded over the day ever 
since my childhood. 

Nobody could help knowing something of the Plymouth pulpit. 
Mr. Beecher's sermons went all over the land, and reached the 
members of a congregation which Saint Peter's could not have held 
had it been twenty times as large. So much of himself as he did 
not expend in sermons, addresses, essays, books, he gave out in 
talk which was listened to as eagerly as ever were the responses 
of an ancient oracle. There seemed to be no end of his productive- 
ness. It is easy to criticise his methods and to find fault with his 
rhetoric. He represented a great natural force as truly as does the 
boiling stream of a geyser. Of course he may have been sometimes 
uncomfortably hot to meddle with, though one of the best-tempered 
men in the world ; of course he sometimes shot up into extrava- 
gance, but the heat that drove forth his impassioned utterances came 
from ''the burning depths below." He was a mighty power in the 
land, — not a talent but 2i puissance, as was said of Berryer. 

It is of little consequence whether a man like Whitefieldor Beecher 
leaves behind him any monumental literary work to carry his name 
down to a remote posterity; — his work was on the life around 
him, and its results can never be known until the books of heaven 
are balanced. 

Mr. Beecher was as genuine an American as ever walked through 
a field of Indian corn. He had not the fine fiber of the scholastic 
thoroughbred, but he had the hearty manhood which we knew 
in Lincoln, the accumulated vitality which reveals itself from time 



to time in mighty natures, never more fully, perhaps, than in that 
of Webster. 

What Mr. Beecher did for the country during the war of secession 
no man can estimate. I ventured to say in 1864, speaking of his 
work in England : 

" In point of fact, this unofficial visit of a private citizen in connection with these 
addresses delivered to miscellaneous crowds by an envoy not extraordinary and a 
minister «M///potentiary, for all that his credentials showed, was an event of 
national importance. It was much more than this, — it was the beginning of a new 
order of things in the relations of nations to each other." 

If the popular orators whom the Old World sends to this country 
all came on errands as holy as was that of Mr. Beecher, we should 
feel much happier about the '* new order of things," as illustrated 
in the missions of the apostles of anarchy and crime. 

Few men have had such burdens laid upon them as those which 
Henry Ward Beecher had to bear during his long and eventful life, 
and he has borne them like a man. His fresh, just-fmished record 
is a wonderful story of a life of almost unexampled activity. The 
characters in which the story is traced may fade out, — they must 
fade out, like other traces of past lives ; but moral force, like physical, 
is indestructible, and the impulse given by his labors in the cause 
of humanity will live unsuspected in far-reaching and imperishable 
influences. 

OLIVER IVENDELL HOLMES. 
Boston. 



GENERAL WILLIAM T. SHERMAN. 

THE friendship existing between Henry Ward Beecher and my- 
self was most warm. We met often at the festal board and 
on the platform, and I recall our wanderings together over the 
plains and in the mountains of California and Oregon. His greeting 
was always so hearty, so full of manly vigor, so outspoken, that he 
seemed to me more like an army comrade than a minister of the 
Gospel. And these two characters are not inconsistent, for Christ 
himself assumed the form and speech of men to go into closer rela- 



tion and thereby influence them for good. Though Brooklyn 
claimed him as her own, Henry Ward Beecher was too large a man 
for any single locality. He was essentially a national man grasping 
all the thoughts and feelings of a continent, storing his mind with 
the beauties of the sea-coast, the vast campaign fields of the in- 
terior, and the wild forests and cliffs of the Rocky Mountains, there- 
by illustrating his discourses by vivid pictures of the glories of the 
universe. His mind and imagination could not be tied down to the 
narrow dogmas which shackled smaller men, and I am not surprised 
but rejoiced to know that he occasionally kicked over the traces. 
My last meeting with Mr. Beecher was at the house of Dr. Talmage, 
and he seemed then so strong that I believed he was destined to 
outlive me. But he has gone, having attained the full measure of 
three-score years and ten, and has left behind a name and fame 
which should satisfy his family, and writings which will carry hope 

and consolation to millions. 

IV. T. SHERMAN, 
New York City. 



THE RIGHT HON. WILLIAM E. GLADSTONE, M. P. 

1 THINK it a high compliment to be invited to contribute to the 
series of memorial writings in honor of Rev. Ward Beecher, and 
I assure you that if I ask to be excused from that duty it is only 
because I am aware that I have not the knowledge, direct and per- 
sonal, which alone could enable me to discharge it worthily. I 
never had the good fortune to meet Mr. Ward Beecher but twice, 
and on neither occasion was 1 in close personal intercourse with 
him. 

To his undying fame the world and his memory stand in no need 
of witnesses, and those who stood within the circle of his friend- 
ship will, I have no doubt, bear ample and weighty tributes to his 
character and wonderful genius. 

I ought to add that I am very grateful for the remarkable but too 
indulgent notices so frequently bestowed upon me by Mr. Beecher. 

IV. E. GLADSTONE. 
London. 



ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 

FEW men have performed so faithfully the labors he assumed 
as Mr. Beecher. Whether in the capacity of theologian, 
orator, lecturer, or citizen, his life marks an era in the history of 
our country, and his vacant place is not likely to be filled. When 
I saw Mr. Beecher in the pulpit, or in any other position where he 
brought his oratorical powers into play, 1 could compare him only to 
the mighty falls of Niagara, sweeping everything before it. He was 
sovereign among orators, as Niagara dominates all other cataracts. 
He was the Himalaya, overtopping all others of his profession ; the 
leviathan, compared with whom the common herd are but as a shoal 
of minnows ; and although there are many occupants of the pulpit, 
men of high aspirations and brilliant talents, yet none of them can 
fill the vacancy. '' None but himself can be his parallel." 

In the pulpit, Mr. Beecher occupied the place held in the forum 
by Daniel Webster, and his great talents were only exceeded by 
his benevolence. It was simply necessary to look into his face 
to see how full of sympathy and kindness was his heart, and should 
any question arise, his account-books would show the thousands 
of dollars spent upon the needy. 

When I first saw Mr. Beecher's benevolent face and leonine head, 
I said to myself, '' What a grand man that is ! " but when I heard 
him speak, it was as if a mighty river was rushing through my soul 
washing out every vestige of sin abiding there, and I think I was a 
better man after listening to that sermon. Twice did I hear him, 
and I would have attended Plymouth Church regularly had I lived 
in its neighborhood. 

The gifts with which nature had endowed our great pulpit ora- 
tor were never used to better purpose than when he made his 
pilgrimage to England during our civil war, to plead the cause of the 
Union and battle against the prejudices of our transatlantic brethren. 
For his services on this occasion, the people of the United States 
owe to Henry Ward Beecher an eternal debt of gratitude. 

The death of this great Christian orator is an event that will 
long be remembered. It is only necessary to recall the weeping 
throngs who attended his funeral to realize how he was appreciated 
by those who knew him best, and the floral offerings laid upon 



his coffm were tributes of affection such as few men have ever 

received. 

Henry Ward Beecher was a great national character, and as such 

will always be remembered. He was ever ready to devote all his 

energies to the service of his country, and had it been necessary, I 

doubt not but that he would have shouldered a musket in her 

defense. 

DAFID D. PORTER. 
Washington. 



THE POET WHITTIER. 

OF Henry Ward Beecher as a reformer and orator, and as a 
great moral and political force in his day and generation, no 
words of mine are needed. Our country owes him a deeper debt 
of gratitude than it has paid or can ever pay him for his noble ser- 
vices in the dark days of the Rebellion. One of the bravest of men, 
he proved the truth of the adage that the bravest are the tenderest. 
Apart from his unequaled pulpit successes, his bold and efficient 
advocacy of temperance and the abolition of slavery entitle him to 
the grateful remembrance of the nation and of all mankind. 

JOHN GREENLEAF IVHITTIER. 
Oak Knoll, Danvers, Mass. 



RIGHT REV. FREDERIC W. FARRAR, D. D., F. R. S. 

10NLY saw Mr. Beecher once, so that my acquaintance with him 
was of the slightest. I once heard him preach at Brooklyn, and 
once heard him lecture in London. It would have been impossible 
for any one to hear him without being struck by his great power. 
I have very rarely listened to any man who seemed to have a more 
powerful hold upon his audience, or a more generous sympathy 
with all sorts and conditions of men of every race under the sun. 

FREDERIC W. FARRAR. 
Westminster, London. 



SONNET. 

'* It is a good thing to work for immediate returns ; but that is the lowest form 
of a man's working. Work for the invisible." — Henry Ward Beecher. 

HOW vast a brotherhood doth mourn this man, 
Who held all men right, brotherly, and dear, 
Or were they free or bond, dwelt far or near, 
Exalt in place, or bowed beneath a ban ! 
Heart-vision made him great ; the under-plan 
Of God's loved world to this so loving seer. 
As in a sunbright prospect did appear, 
Toward which his fleet warm hopes forever ran. 

All ye his brothers ! well he wrought for you ; 

And for the invisible in you he wrought. 

Truth's fields and sacred Freedom's battles fought. 

Into the invisible he late withdrew, 

Yet still works here, though lost to outward view. 

Kindling from heart to heart high-missioned thought. 

EDITH M. THOMAS. 
Geneva, Ohio. 



REV. ROBERT COLLYER, D. D. 

I CAN give no better estimate of Henry Ward Beecher than by say- 
ing that he suited me in all respects. His work in the religious life 
of this country was very great. What Tasso said of his instructor 
may be said of Mr. Beecher: he was like a whetstone, for all that 
came in contact with it were able to put a fine edge on their tools. 
We are all brighter from contact with pure souls, and so we were 
when brought in contact with Henry Ward Beecher. To my mind 
he was the greatest preacher on this planet, and had been since he 
arrived at the fullness of his life. His thought will not die with him, 
though it may become absorbed in other minds, but never in books. 
His mind was like fine wheat sown to spring in new harvests. His 
living spirit cannot die. Men will be his debtors for ages to come, 



8 

as he did so much in these plastic times, when all things are so 
fluent. One great thing in his character was that, with all the ad- 
vance he made as a pioneer of new truth and new life, he never 
lost sight of the settlement in which his brethren lived. Then he 
had such an inexhaustible fund of things to say, illustrations pouring 
out of his mind as rivers pour their tides down to the ocean, and 
never running dry. A great many sermons are like a glass of Mis- 
souri water, — you must let it stand and settle before you can drink ; 
very often you will have to throw half away. But the sermons 
that Henry Ward Beecher preached were translucent, fresh, and 
pure as spring water. 

ROBERT COLLYER. 
New York City. 



MR. EDWIN BOOTH. 

IT was my misfortune never to have met our great countryman 
Mr. Beecher, but many years ago, on one of the saddest occa- 
sions of my life, he sent me a message of such hope and encourage- 
ment that I have ever held him in grateful and affectionate esteem. 
Were it in my power to add the merest leaf to his hardly-won and 
well-merited olive wreath, I would gladly do so ; but, alas ! I can 
offer to his family and his friends only my profound sympathy. 

EDPVIN BOOTH. 
San Francisco. 



GENERAL JOHN C. FREMONT. 

IT is to me one of the satisfactions which stay in a man's life, to 
have had the friendship and support of Mr. Beecher in some of 
the contests through which this country has fought its way upward 
during the generation which has just closed. The aid which he 
then gave was not merely an influence, but the support of a crys- 
tallized opinion which surrounded him and moved with him. Of 
this kind was the aid he gave to the preliminary struggle of the 



Northern people in 1 856, and his public and emphatic approval given 
to the proclamation of freedom in the early part of the civil war. 

It was in connection with these events that I knew him best. 
Like Mr. Calhoun, if Mr. Beecher had been in political life, he would 
have been the leader not of a party but rather of a sect devoted and 
unquestioning. If his life had been cast in Southern Europe or 
Asia, he would have been a great prophet and swayed nations. He 
had the strong personality and the vivid eloquence which rouse 
men to the enthusiasm that controls events. 

In later years I had rarely met him. The intercourse with all the 
world, growing yearly more intimate, brings before us daily such a 
concourse of events to demand attention that our friends occupy 
less space, and I have only had passing glimpses of his actions and 
opinions. These all went to show how incessantly and deeply his 
mind was dwelling upon the great truths and the great myste- 
ries to the elucidation of which he devoted his life. 

Not often do the tidings which bring to our unwilling ears the 
extinction of a great life leave behind them such deep regret and 
pity. But the record of his noble life is now immovable. He has 
crossed over the '' narrow frith " to the obscure immensity which 
the efforts of his tireless mind lost itself in seeking to penetrate, and 
now in the searching light of that further shore where all is known 
he stands, at rest, before Him who is infinite in love. 

J. C. FREMONT. 
Washington. 



MRS. JAMES A. GARFIELD. 

IT was my privilege a few times to listen to Mr. Beecher, and the 
memory of his earnest words, of the lessons they taught, and 
the encouragement they gave will abide with me an inspiration 
forever. To his generation has he been a grand example of heroic 
devotion to the search for truth ; a brave exponent of the high 
principles he professed in character worthy of the world's respect 
and veneration, and of him now can it be truly said, **He being 
dead, yet speaketh.'' 

LUCRETIA R. GARFIELD. 
Mentor, Ohio. 



10 



THE PASTOR'S FAREWELL. 

THE sermon was o*er — the prayer — the song 
And dimmed was the mellow light ; 
With summer at heart, the homeward throng 
Went out in the winter night. 

But the pastor staid, at his tired heart's choice. 
To list to the chanted word ; 

For the organ-loft and the human voice 
Still sung to the pastor's Lord. 

The sweet tones brought to his wearied heart 
Their mingled smiles and tears ; 

And he felt that night full loath to part 
From the shrine of forty years. 

The scene of a thousand wondrous hours 
He saw, as he glanced around ; 

The vase of affection's faithful flowers — 
The blood of a battle-ground. 

'Twas here he had preache'd with tones of love, 

Or the clarion call of strife, 
Of God within, as well as above. 

And sweetened the bread of life. 

And here, with gesture of brave command 

And tenderly beaming face. 
He had reached to the world a thrilling hand, 

And fought for the human race. 

'Twas here, with a strength by anguish bought 

And a love that never slept. 
He rocked the cradle of new-born thought, 

While the century smiled and wept. 

He saw the thousands that o'er this track 

Had walked to the country of day ; 

And now they seemed to be reaching back, • 
And beckoning him away. 



Brooklyn. 



II 



But ere long time his soul had been 
By olden memories stirred, 

Two boys from the street came wandering in, 
To list to the chanted word. 

Two young, fresh hearts, with a goodly sum 
Of innocence' saving leaven. 

Like such it is said ours must become 
Before we can enter heaven. 

They heard in silence, with face upturned. 
And tremulous, deep surprise. 

And all the fire of the music burned 
Within their youthful eyes. 

There crept to the old man's eyes a mist ; 

And down the pulpit stair 
He gently came, and tenderly kissed 

The children lingering there. 

And o'er their shoulders his arms he threw. 
This king with the crown of gray. 

And finally, like three comrades true, 
Together they walked away. 

And two went out in the winter night. 
Their earth-toil just begun ; 

The other, forth to eternal light. 

His work for the planet done. 



IVILL CARLETON. 



HON. JOHN SHERMAN. 

So many eloquent and able tributes to the memory of Henry Ward 
Beecher have already been written, presenting his wonderful 
life and great career in language so eloquent, that when I under- 
take to add to these eulogies my pen falls from my hand, and 1 feel 
that anything I might write would only be a repetition of words and 



12 

ideas printed before in more glowing language, and by friends who 
knew him better than I. These eulogies detail his wonderful career 
as preacher, lecturer, orator, humanitarian, journalist, and citizen in 
so full and attractive a shape, that no one could be at a loss in 
placing Henry Ward Beecher as one of the greatest, if not the 
greatest, of the men of our times, with a warm heart for every 
human being, with genuine sympathy for all who suffered injustice, 
and with an intellectual power and an address that made him the 
most successful preacher and the most striking orator of his day. 

Mr. Beecher has now closed the record of his life, and the pas- 
sion and prejudice of his contests while living are passing away, 
so that we can feel and express without limit our admiration 
and affection for him. Generous, brave, and sympathetic, a hater 
of falsehood, he was also a man of the highest intellectual ability 
and culture. Believing, as I heartily do, that the good will be 
rewarded in a future life, 1 have faith that Henry Ward Beecher will 
take his place in the world of spirits, and there enjoy ''that vast 
and bright eternity — all vivid with God's love — in which an instant 
vision shall be perfect joy, and an immortal labor shall be to him 
immortal rest." 

JOHN SHERMAN, 

Washington. 



HIS GRACE, THE DUKE OF ARGYLL. 

MY regret is sincere that my personal acquaintance with Mr. 
Beecher was far too limited to enable me or entitle me to 
express any opinion except in his character as a public man. More- 
over, even in this aspect I have no direct knowledge of anything 
except the prominent part he took in the great contest against 
slavery in the United States. In this matter he did noble work, — 
work as noble as that done by his illustrious sister, my old friend, 
Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe. These two names will be held in 
everlasting remembrance by all who value the efforts of genius in 
a noble cause. 

ARGYLL. 
Argyll Lodge, London. 



13 

REV. W. H. H. MURRAY. 

ABRAHAM Lincoln emancipated men's bodies ; Henry Ward 
^ Beecher emancipated their minds. The one delivered them 
from injustice ; the other, from superstition. The one was buried 
amid the tears of his countrymen; the other, with the admiring 
tributes of mankind. Both were the gift of God. The one, that 
America might be free ; the other, that Christendom might be 
enlightened. I mourned over Lincoln's grave as over the saviour 
of Liberty, dead ; I mourn over the going of Beecher as at the 
departure of a seer of God. 

To Henry Ward Beecher were given eyes that were not born of 
the flesh, nor limited, as to their power, by the capacity of the 
senses : eyes that saw through and within the circumference even 
to the center of things ; that saw the long parallels of truth with- 
out contraction, and so ever beheld unfolding before them the 
wide horizons of God, and not a mere point of human determining. 
He looked, and he saw ; he gazed, and beheld ; and what had 
been hidden to others, to him was revealed. For he saw as none 
ever saw, save the seers of God, the hidden and sweet things of 
Life Everlasting. 

And to this power of vision was added a voice, — a voice that 
said to the eyes, "\ will tell what you see, whether men hear or 
forbear," and it did ; and for years it sang and it thundered. And 
men hearing trembled or wept, laughed, or cheered the voice that 
none might resist, for the power of judgment, of honor, and of 
tenderest love was in it. 

Nay, Beecher, I say not farewell ! For thou art not gone, but 
only vanished. Our eyes shall see thee again, and our ears shall 
hear the song of thy lips, even wiser than ever, and our hearts shall 
feel the beating of thine and glow as of old, for thou art teacher 
and prophet of God for ever and ever, and we and all men are thy 
pupils. So, I say not farewell, as do many, but rather " Good speed, 
and far-going ! " Thou art flying a new flight, and with wings 
that tire not thou art speeding and looking and learning. Thou art 
seeing strange sights and wide views, and over deep depths art 
thou poising, and beyond thee are heights, — thou shall reach them ! 
And with thee fly many who are wise and far-sighted : the seers of 



14 

all ages and the prophets of all peoples, and by them thou art taught, 
and them thou art teaching of God, many-named, but One only. 

Good speed, good speed ! say we then. Thou art gone, but we 
follow. For by and by toiling onward awhile and then mounting 
upward, we will come, — we with many, — and then thou shalt tell 
us of all thou hast seen, and teach us again of Mercy and Truth and 
the Way of Life Everlasting. Good speed, good speed, great soul ! 
Go on and up, ever seeing and learning. We will join thee anon ! 

IVILLIAM HENRY HARRISON MURRAY. 
Burlington, Vermont. 



MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

IN the death of Henry Ward Beecher, America loses its greatest 
citizen, the world its greatest preacher. The Republic has indeed 
a few names greater than his upon its century's roll — a very few ; 
but the world's records for all time contains not the name of 
a greater pulpit orator. The supremely great preacher deals not 
only with the future life, he proves his power to influence for 
good the events of this life, in which our duties lie. This attribute 
of supreme greatness Mr. Beecher fully shares with Savonarola, 
Becket, Richelieu, and Knox ; and it is this which raises him and 
sets him upon a pedestal apart from any preacher of his time. 

It was not my privilege to know this great man with the inti- 
macy which brings into view the common infirmities of humanity. 
It was in his great moods, when he was at his best, that 1 beheld 
him — far enough away, as it were, for the mass and grandeur of 
the mountain and not its inequalities of surface to show upon the 
horizon. One felt in his presence that nature had sketched with a 
free hand and upon broad lines a massive character. Nothing petty, 
nothing vindictive — a lovable, loving man, brimful and running 
over with melting charity, all-embracing. 

Mr. Beecher must ever remain before us in the twofold charac- 
ter of preacher and statesman. In the former field he was the fore- 
most and most powerful champion of that select band of advanced 
men who are broadening and deepening the furrows in the hard 



15 

and barren soil of theology, that the light of the sun and the dews 
of heaven may penetrate it and make it fertile. 

The fame of the orator, like that of the actor, necessarily rests 
upon tradition ; and in this age when theology has lost its vital 
hold, the pulpit orator, in particular, rarely makes any contribution 
to the thoughts of men destined to survive him. His special prov- 
ince, the elucidation of creeds, is scarcely tolerated when the minis- 
ter is in the flesh, and can adorn the subject with graces of speech 
and action. That his disquisitions are to be read when he is gone 
is not to be expected. But Mr. Beecher's influence upon theology 
is nevertheless destined to be permanent ; for he was a revolution- 
ary force in the ecclesiastical field. 

It is, however, in his capacity as statesman that he is to be long- 
est and most gratefully remembered. Here he not only indicated, 
but in great measure dictated, the policy of the State in the greatest 
crisis of its history. The most powerful voice in the struggle with 
slavery was his, and his, too, the position in the front. Always 
pointing unerringly the next step which the patriot had to take — 
never doubting, never faltering, never waiting, but always indicat- 
ing the only true path to safety ; preaching a holy crusade against 
slavery, insisting that only through the removal of the guilt could 
the terrible struggle end, Henry Ward Beecher was the inspired 
prophet of the land — at once the Moses and Joshua of our 
exodus from the thralls of bondage to the fair heights of freedom. 
And having raised the masses at home to the height of the great 
contest, he went forth to appeal to the democracy of England to 
stay the hand of aristocracy eager to strike at republican institutions 
in the hour of trial. 

Few Americans fill the world with their name ; but there is not 
a community in the civilized world where the name of Henry Ward 
Beecher is unknown. No one can hesitate to pronounce him a 
genius. The essence of genius is that it sits, solitary and alone, 
upon a throne of its own creation. We have one Shakespeare and 
one Burns. The world is never to see another of either. We have 
in Beecher one who resembles them in this : that as he was with- 
out prototype, he is to remain without successor. 

ANDREM^ CARNEGIE. 
Pittsburgh. 



i6 



MISS ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND. 

THE last time I saw Mr. Beecher was something over one year 
ago". On that occasion he told me that he had never felt more 
equal to his work ; that he was then confronting the public, either 
from pulpit or platform, upon an average of once each day ; that he 
was conscious in no way of any loss of strength or vigor. His ap- 
pearance did not belie his words. As he sat, erect and ruddy, talk- 
ing earnestly of those great themes which were his life-long study, 
he certainly looked, in his composure of strength, all that he claimed. 
This was during a short stop he made in Washington on his way 
to points further South in fulfillment of his engagements. Later on 
in the season he crossed the ocean, and our mother country felt 
again, throughout her whole domain, in these his riper years, as 
before in middle life, the undiminished magnetism of his genius. 

Now, in the seclusion of a country hamlet, untouched by that 
great world in which we last met, I realize at length, after much 
argument of brain bewildered, and heart wounded, by his sudden 
taking off, that he has again gone abroad, this time far and forever ; 
that all his magnificent mortality has dropped from him ; that he 
will not return to us, and that only as we go to him can we again 
be in his company. Yet, of what mortal man has it ever been less 
true to say that he is dead? To what living spirit has ever been, 
or would ever be, more exactly fitted those words of St. Paul : 
**Not .... unclothed, but clothed upon, that mortality might 
be swallowed up of life " ? 

It will be long before the last word will be said of Henry Ward 
Beecher. To take all the testimony as to the fruitage of his life, his 
love and his labor for his fellows, would be to traverse in all its 
round area this world of ours (one little spot of which alone could 
claim to be his home !), and to halt, with recording pen, at many 
obscure dwellings whose occupants discharge in constant, unrec- 
ognized remittances of love and gratitude their life-long debts to 
him who was their preacher, their teacher, and their friend. 

It is well to have this written memorial that it may bear what 
testimony it can to the memory of this beloved man ; to thus per- 
petuate some slight expression of the feeling toward him of a very 
few of those who now rise up to call him blessed. But it is due to 



17 

him and to them ahke that these favored few who gladly inscribe a 
leaf within this volume should realize that we are but as a handful 
of grain from the vast stretch of sand that girdles the unfathomed 
sea to those who are and who, from the nature of things, must con- 
tinue to be, if not in every sense the great unknown, yet always 
certainly the great unheard-from. Could their voices join ours in 
this tribute, there would arise an echo from that chorus which would 
knock at the very gate of that heaven into which he of whom we 
sing has entered, and perchance steal in a minor yet not discordant 
note to that celestial symphony to which his ear is now forever 

attuned. 

ROSE ELIZABETH CLEVELAND. 
Holland Patent, N. Y. 



SIGNOR TOMMASO SALVINI. 

IN giving utterance to my feelings respecting the Rev. Henry 
Ward Beecher I lack, in addition to other difficulties, the par- 
amount advantage of having known him personally. I can, there- 
fore, only limit myself to a just appreciation of his fame, rendered 
world-wide through the innumerable endowments which distin- 
guished so great a personality. From all those who have had the 
good fortune of listening to his oratory, we gather expressions of 
profound admiration for the depth and acumen of his philosophical 
ideas and universal knowledge ; as also for his religious views and 
humanitarian principles, which, shaped into words and delivered 
with all the mastery of elocution and the charm of the most per- 
fect diction, proclaimed him to be indeed one of the best patterns 
of the true apostles of Christ. How many rare qualities, hidden 
from public gaze, must they who knew him intimately have had 
occasion to observe in so refined and privileged a nature ! 

It is said that death, being common to all, is a just law, and I 
am myself convinced of its equity as a general rule; but it appears 
to me most tyrannical when thus wrenching from our midst one 
wh©, still in the main strength of his exalted manhood, was lavish- 
ing upon all those around him the inexhaustible treasures of his 
unbounded knowledge and wisdom. 



i8 

Anxious though I be to express my deep-laid sympathy to his 
bereaved family, yet stronger do I feel in me the desire of offering 
my deepest condolence to the nation for the loss of so illustrious a 
son, — nay, of mourning with all mankind at large for the place 
left vacant by so noble and tireless a champion on the path of prog- 
ress and in the cause of universal good. 

TO MM A SO SALVINI. 
Florence, Italy. 



EX-PRESIDENT RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 

THE only time 1 ever heard William H. Seward in public speech 
was in Washington, at a meeting of friends of Governor 
Thomas Corwin, held soon after his death, to take steps for the 
removal of his remains to their final resting-place at his home in Ohio. 

Mr. Seward said : **1 concur in all that has been spoken in regard 
to the eloquence, the wit, the humor, the generosity, the amia- 
bility, and the genius of the deceased. Eloquence and every other 
talent, however, are but instruments in what we do or attempt to 
do. The question is, what he has done, or what he has attempted 
to do, for his country and for mankind." 

Henry Ward Beecher's career will stand the test suggested by 
the wise statesman of New York. On the vital questions of his time, 
at the critical periods, at the very points where the need was the 
sorest and the hazard the greatest, his talents were all employed 
on the side of his country and of humanity, with a devotion and 
courage which Americans will always remember and admire. In 
the anti-slavery struggle his pen and voice and presence were 
always at the command of the good but unpopular cause. The 
cities of New York and Brooklyn had few favors to bestow on the 
abolitionist. Mr. Beecher knew very well that, with his gifts, 
popularity, fame, and wealth without stint were at his feet if he 
would speak only smooth things. But, with a cheerful spirit, he 
bravely kept the faith, and did his appointed work. During years 
of almost hopeless struggle he stood by the slave, the type of what- 
ever was humble and lowly and helpless among men. 



^9 

Again, in the great conflict, when all was at stake, he justly earned 
an honored place on the roll of those who served their country best. 
Secession had but one chance in the war. Grant that the people of 
the North had equal sense, equal patriotism, and equal pluck and 
endurance with the people of the South, and the contest might be, 
as it was, long and hard indeed, but it could not be doubtful. The 
one rational hope of the South was help from Europe. European 
intervention depended on England. Her ruling class, as a body, 
were against the Union, and were ready to serve the South. 
Would public opinion hold them back? This was the question. 
Our Government strained every nerve to reach the English mind. 
Our best equipped men for such work were sent abroad. Bishop 
Mac Ilvaine, Archbishop Hughes, Thurlow Weed, and others were 
selected to spread before Great Britain the merits of the cause 
of America. In 1863 Mr. Beecher met the English people and 
debated before them the critical question. At the beginning his 
audiences were stubbornly, violently, and almost unanimously 
against him. 1 need not give the history of his brilliant triumph. 
It was complete and overwhelming. In fitting and merited recog- 
nition of this wonderful service, the honor was given to Henry 
Ward Beecher to replace upon Fort Sumter the flag which Disunion 
and Slavery had pulled down. 

RUTHERFORD B. HAYES. 
Fremont, Ohio. 



M. AUGUSTE BARTHOLDI. 

I AM too much attached to all that is American not to be touched 
with sentiments of sorrow at the death of the illustrious Henry 
Ward Beecher. His sublime life cannot but leave its mark upon 
the generation which has had the honor and glory to possess it, and 
the beneficent influence of his works is destined to be eternally 

felt by posterity. 

BARTHOLDI. 
Paris, France. 



20 



REV. T. DE WITT TALMAGE, D. D. 

WHEN, amid a congratulatory scene at my house a few days 
before his death, Mr. Beecher came to me at the close of 
the evening and said, " 1 am going now,'' and I answered, " you 
shall not go," and he said, with an arch smile, ''but 1 will go," 
I had no idea that his stay in this world was to be so soon 
terminated. 

Others may speak of Henry Ward Beecher in other relations : I 
speak of him as a neighbor. Neighboring pastors, sad to say, are 
not always good friends. Disaffected members cross over from 
church to church, and the transfer sometimes causes pastoral irrita- 
tions. But Mr. Beecher had no sympathy with such infinitesimals. 
He always had a kind word to say of his neighbors, and when he 
met them was as genial as a morning in June. We met one day 
on the street in front of a furniture store, chairs and sofas standing 
outside the door. " Come," said he, " let us sit down here and talk," 
and so in the street we sat and talked, until the number of specta- 
tors and auditors gathered suggested to us that we had better move 
on. Many a long ride had we together in the rail-cars, going to 
great distances. His anecdotes never gave out, and we never had 
so good a time together as when we got into discussions in which 
we were diametrically opposed. He on the way to Cincinnati, and 
I on the way to Chicago, while nearing Pittsburgh, he said to me: 
*' Talmage, you don't know anything about mathematics." I said 
to him, ' ' 1 know as much about them as you do. " So we went into 
competitive examination on the ''multiplication-table," and he 
tried " eight-times," and broke down, and 1 tried "nine-times," 
with similar discomfiture. We then agreed never again to make 
any allusion to the subject of mathematics. 

For nearly nineteen years we worked side by side, and there was 
never a ripple between us. 1 shall never have a better neighbor. 
Although we belonged to different generations, he never took on 
the patronizing air that the older sometimes shows toward the 
younger. But he has passed out from among us, and we had all 
betterbe busy, since we see that the longest life soon ends — a lesson 
we learn every day, and forget as soon as we learn it. With his 
afflicted family we have more sympathy than we can utter, and 



21 

for Plymouth Church we wish great prosperity. God makes no 
two men alike, and that church will not expect a repetition of their 
former pastor; but there are a hundred men that I know, anyone of 
whom could take the pulpit of that church, and from it wield 
unlimited usefulness. 

Realizing that this letter is not the conventional letter written for 
memorial volumes, 1 hope nevertheless it may not be an inappro- 
priate expression of admiration for a good neighbor gone forever. 

r. DE IVITT TALMAGE. 
Brooklyn. 



MR. GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS. 

THE traditions of Summerfield represent a beautiful youth and a 
captivating speaker. The charm of Channing was profound 
and indescribable. But Henry Ward Beecher recalls Whitefield more 
than any other renowned preacher. Like Whitefield, he was what 
is known as a man of the people ; a man of strong virility, of 
exuberant vitality, of quick sympathy, of an abounding humor, of 
a rapid play of poetic imagination, of great fluency of speech; an 
emotional nature overflowing in ardent expression, of strong con- 
victions, of complete self-confidence ; but also not sensitive, nor 
critical, nor judicial; a hearty, joyous nature, touching ordinary 
human life at every point, and responsive to every generous moral 
impulse. 

In the pulpit, he inculcated right living, rather than traditional 
doctrine. He was a soldier of the church militant, but his warfare 
was with human wrong and misery, and false theories of life, and 
low aims, and poor ambitions. He aimed to build up righteous- 
ness of life, and in the ardor of the strife he liked to pause and 
wink, and let fly a bright-tipped, winged word at the opponent, 
against whom he bore no kind of malice. He hated the wrong, but 
not the wrong-doer. His profession was the preaching of peace 
and good- will. But how often he must have felt that his Master 
came not to bring peace, but a sword ! His buoyant temperament. 



22 

his perfect health, his love of nature and of man, of children and 
flowers, of the changing sky and landscape, his abounding sym- 
pathy, his rich and sensitive humor, made his life joyous and often 
happy. But it was none the less a stormy life, ending at last, amid 
the sorrow of a country, in happy rest and the good fame of a great 

orator for human welfare. 

GEORGE IVILUAM CURTIS. 
West New Brighton, Staten Island. 



MR. LAWRENCE BARRETT. 

DESPITE the many obstacles that seem to rise before me as I 
attempt to pen a few words in memory of the great preacher 
and citizen who has left us, I am nevertheless desirous to be 
included among those who, with their testimonials in this memorial 
volume, will testify to the honor which they feel of having lived in 
the age of Beecher, and who knew the courage which carried him 
to the front at critical moments in the history of our country, 
as a leader whom all must follow. 1 would like to stand among 
those recorders who can testify to the eloquence which fell sponta- 
neously from his inspired lips, voicinga fearless soul which confronted 
the narrow dogma in which his youthful soul was swathed with 
the sublime audacity of his wonderful genius. I am old enough to 
recall that period of his career when he fell into line with the con- 
temners of the drama, and I rejoiced in the liberality which led him 
in his later years to confess his early error, and regret that he could 
have ever been arrayed against the foremost literary influence of .all 
ages. 

Through Henry Ward Beecher the century offers the welcoming 
light of revelation to inspire the teachings of science. The church 
has been made the better for his life ; mankind was an incalculable 
gainer by it, and his death was a blow which all humanity felt. A 
place has been made vacant which no living man can fill, and the 
loss to the nation and to the world, therefore, is irreparable. 

LAWRENCE BARRETT. 
New York City. 



23 
HENRY WARD BEECHER, 

PREACHER, PATRIOT, PHILANTHROPIST. 

CE a fountain that upsprings 
In a desert wild and drear, 
Like a clarion note that rings 
Through the fastnesses of fear ; 

Like a fortress on a rock. 
Set to guard a wide domain, 

Sheltering the affrighted flock 

When Destruction sweeps the plain ; 

Like a storm whose grandeur wild 
Takes its way at heaven's behest ; 

Like a Samson undefiled, 
To Untruth a fatal guest : 

Thus, with thoughts that flame and soar. 

Thus, with spirit- weaponed hand, 
For dear peace and righteous war. 

Stood our preacher in the land. 

Gracious nature, graceful art, 

Wove for him their blended crown ; 

He could bless with brimming heart. 
He could call God's thunder down. 

Bitter woes of humankind ! 

Sin and sorrow, grief and wrong, 
Was he to your beckoning blind ? 

Did he slight you in his song? 

And the mystic things of God 

That we dimly apprehend, 
Did he tread them, roughly shod, 

Shatter beauties without end ? 

I remember well the thrill 
Multitudes were glad to share 






24 

When the solemn aisles did fill 
With the music of his prayer ; 

With his sermon wisely planned, 
Reasoned with a master's might ; 

Faith's illuminating hand 

Touched its sentences with light. 

That we had him is a boon 

That commands a song of praise ; 

That we lose him oversoon 
Is a grief for all our days. 

Having? Losing? All those years 
Pregnant with celestial fire ; 

Can we quench them with our tears, 
Like a warrior's funeral pyre ? 

No, those treasures dearly bought 
Are beyond the reach of fate ; 

They are builded in our thought. 
They are welded in our state. 

On the solemn judgment mount 
He, methinks, may fearless stand, 

For the final, dread account. 
With his record in his hand. 

A great army would attest 
The true succor that he gave 

To the poor God loveth best. 
To the woman, to the slave ! 

He once more may fitly pray 
If a prayer can sound in heaven : 

'' Be God's help to me this day. 
As the help that I have given." 



Boston. 



JULIA JVARD HOH^E. 



^5 

MARCHIONESS ADELAIDE RISTORI DEL GRILLO. 

IT is difficult for me to say how much grieved I am at the news 
of the Rev. Henry Ward Beecher's death. Such a loss is not 
only a sad blow to his friends, but to mankind, because in him 
has just passed away one of the most powerful champions of civ- 
ilization, whose splendid example and inspired words contributed 
so effectually to the emancipation of the negro. It is with a 
melancholy satisfaction that I write my regrets with those of all his 
countrymen, preserving in my heart an indelible remembrance of 
this true apostle of science, progress, and freedom. 

ADELAIDE RISTORI DEL GRILLO. 
Rome, Italy. 

HON. GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 

WITH no means at hand for a studied review of the life of 
Henry Ward Beecher, I will nevertheless state my im- 
pressions of this remarkable man. They are founded entirely on 
his career as it was manifested to the public, for I had not the 
honor of a personal acquaintance with him. Seen in such a light, 
I think it cannot be doubted that he was a man of intense earnest- 
ness and high courage. It seemed as easy for him to breast the 
currents of popular opinion, and to obstruct the course of hoary 
tyrannies, as it is for many to float on the changing stream of the 
one as to be instruments and supporters of the other. His sense 
of what was meant by liberty among men, and what that liberty 
really was and must be, unless it were to be a lofty phrase to hide 
a mass of lies and wrongs (as it now sometimes is), must have 
been profound, for his voice and influence were devoted to the 
cause of antislavery when, even in communities legally free, it 
brought obloquy and not renown. 

His visit to England and his work there, in a dark and critical 
period of the rebellion, when the government and the great body 
of the ruling classes of that country were exerting all their power 
(just short of open alliance with the rebel government) to effect 
the destruction of our republic, — when, as related by Justin 
McCarthy in his history. Lord Russell was saying that the struggle 



26 

was one *'in which the North were striving for empire and the 
South for independence," and when William E. Gladstone was 
declaring that ''the President of the Southern Confederation, Mr. 
Jefferson Davis, had made an army, had made a navy, and, more 
than that, had made a nation," — when the Duke of Argyll and John 
Bright and a very few others were our only open friends, — were 
a conspicuous example of the lofty and persistent moral courage 
that seemed to grow more and more bright and daring in pro- 
portion to the number of the foes to be overcome. 

Another example may be found in his differences with his clerical 
brethren. Whether we agree or not with his beliefs or propo- 
sitions, we must render due homage to that independence of 
thought and brave candor that bore him to warfare against the 
creeds and traditionary dialectics that appeared to him to separate 
the individual man from direct and responsible relations with his 
Creator, and to make his soul's welfare dependent upon the opinion 
or the belief or the intervention of some other man. 

His political conduct also was of the same type. Platforms and 
candidates no more measured or controlled his action as a citizen 
than did formulated creeds or rituals his religious responsibilities. 
Unity and cooperation if possible ; but first and always the duty of 
the man and citizen to walk in the path that was made clear to 
him, rather than in the way that was the light of others, was with 
him apparently a controlling maxim. 

But it has appeared to me that, more than his aggressive and 
independent courage in affairs, religious and secular, more than his 
gift of that real eloquence which combines logic and sentiment in 
due and persuasive proportion, was his greatness shown in the all 
too-rare quality of cheerful and enduring fortitude in adversity. 
The systematic and organized assaults upon his personal character 
by enemies, and the still more trying estrangement of long-cher- 
ished friends, could not move him from the calm and even tenor of 
his way as a Christian teacher and a Christian man. In such an 
evil time he must have believed 

" That it becomes no man to nurse despair, 
But in the teeth of clenched antagonisms 
To follow up the worthiest till he die." 

GEORGE F. EDMUNDS. 
Washington. 



27 

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. 

WHILE I am by no means certain that anything I might prepare 
for the proposed memorial to the late Henry Ward Beecher 
would be worthy of a place among the eloquent and beautiful trib- 
utes which are sure to be presented, the request to furnish a contri- 
bution spurs to action my desire and intention to express to Mrs. 
Beecher more fully than I have yet done my sympathy in her afflic- 
tion, and my appreciation of my own and the country's loss in the 
death of the great preacher. 

More than thirty years ago I repeatedly enjoyed the opportunity 
of hearing him in his own pulpit. His warm utterances, and the 
earnest interest he displayed in the practical things related to use- 
ful living, the hopes he inspired, and the manner in which he 
relieved the precepts of Christianity from gloom and cheerlessness, 
made me feel that, though a stranger, he was my friend. Many 
years afterward we came to know each other, and since that time 
my belief in his friendship, based upon acquaintance and personal 
contact, has been to me a source of the greatest satisfaction. 

His goodness and kindness of heart, so far as they were mani- 
fested in his personal life and in his home, are sacred to his family 
and to their grief ; but, so far as they gave color and direction to his 
teachings and opinions, they are proper subjects for gratitude and 
congratulation on the part of every American citizen. They caused 
him to take the side of the common people in every discussion. He 
loved his fellows in their homes ; he rejoiced in their content- 
ment and comfort, and sympathized with them in their daily hard- 
ships and trials. As their champion, he advocated in all things the 
utmost regulated and wholesome liberty and freedom. His sub- 
lime faith in the success of popular government led him to trust the 
people, and to treat their errors and misconceptions with generous 
toleration. An honorable pride in American citizenship, guided by 
the teachings of religion, he believed to be a sure guaranty of a 
splendid national destiny. I never met Mr. Beecher without gain- 
ing something from his broad views and wise reflections. 

The personal affliction of his family in his death stands alone in 
its magnitude and depth. But thousands wish that their sense of 
loss might temper the grief of that household, and that they, by 



28 

sharing such sorrow, might lighten it. Such kindly assurances, 
and the realization of those who were knit to him by family ties, of 
the high and sacred mission accomplished in his useful life, furnish 
all this world can supply of comfort ; but their faith and piety will 
not fail to lead them to a higher and better source of consolation. 

GROVER CLEVELAND. 

Washington. 



ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 

HENRY WARD BEECHER was bom in a Puritan penitentiary, of 
which his father was one of the wardens — a prison with 
very narrow and closely grated windows. Under its walls were 
the rayless, hopeless, and measureless dungeons of the damned, and 
on its roof fell the shadow of God's eternal frown. In this prison 
the creed and catechism were primers for children, and from a pure 
sense of duty their loving hearts were stained and scarred with the 
religion of John Calvin. 

In those days the home of an orthodox minister was an inqui- 
sition in which babes were tortured for the good of their souls. 
Children then, as now, rebelled against the infamous absurdities 
and cruelties of the creed. No Calvinist was ever able, unless with 
blows, to answer the questions of his child. Children were raised 
in what was called '* the nurture and admonition of the Lord," — that 
is to say, their wills were broken or subdued, their natures 
deformed and dwarfed, their desires defeated or destroyed, and 
their development arrested or perverted. Life was robbed of its 
Spring, its Summer, and its Autumn. Children stepped from the 
cradle into the snow. No laughter, no sunshine, no joyous, free, 
unburdened days. God, an infinite detective, watched them from 
above, and Satan, with malicious leer, was waiting for their souls 
below. Between these monsters life was passed. Infinite conse- 
quences were predicated of the smallest action, and a burden greater 
than a god could bear was placed upon the heart and brain of every 
child. To think, to ask questions, to doubt, to investigate, were 



29 

acts of rebellion. To express pity for the lost, writhing in the 
dungeons below, was simply to give evidence that the enemy of 
souls had been at work within their hearts. 

Among all the religions of this world — from the creed of Canni- 
bals who devoured flesh to that of Calvinists who polluted souls — 
there is none, there has been none, there will be none more utterly 
heartless and inhuman than was the orthodox Congregationalism of 
New England in the year of grace 1813. It despised every natural 
joy, hated pictures, abhorred statues as lewd and lustful things, 
execrated music, regarded Nature as fallen and corrupt, man as 
totally depraved, and woman as somewhat worse. The theater was 
the vestibule of perdition, actors the servants of Satan, and Shake- 
speare a trifling wretch, whose words were seeds of death. And 
yet the virtues found a welcome, cordial and sincere ; duty was 
done as understood ; obligations were discharged ; truth was told ; 
self-denial was practiced for the sake of others, and hearts were 
good and true in spite of book and creed. 

In this atmosphere of theological miasma, in this hideous dream 
of superstition, in this penitentiary, moral and austere, this babe 
first saw the imprisoned gloom. 

The natural desires ungratified, the laughter suppressed, the logic 
brow-beaten by authority, the humor frozen by fear, — of many 
generations, — were in this child — a child destined to rend and 
wreck the prison's walls. 

Through the grated windows of his cell this child, this boy, this 
man caught glimpses of the outer world, of fields and skies. New 
thoughts were in his brain, new hopes within his heart. Another 
heaven bent above his life. There came a revelation of the beautiful 
and real. Theology grew mean and small. 

Nature wooed, and won, and saved this mighty soul. 

Her countless hands were sowing seeds within his tropic brain. 
All sights and sounds — all colors, forms, and fragments were 
stored within the treasury of his mind. His thoughts were molded 
by the graceful curves of streams, by winding paths in woods, the 
charm of quiet country roads and lanes grown indistinct with weeds 
and grass — by vines that cling and hide with leaf and flower the 
crumbling wall's decay — by cattle standing in the Summer pools 
like statues of content. 



30 

There was within his words the subtle spirit of the season's 
change — of everything that is, of everything that Ues between the 
slumbering seeds, that half awakened by the April rain have dreams 
of heaven's blue and feel the amorous kisses of the sun, and that 
strange tomb wherein the Alchemist doth give to death's cold dust 
the throb and thrill of life again. 

He saw with loving eyes the willows of the* meadow-streams 
grow red beneath the glance of Spring — the grass along the marsh's 
edge — the stir of life beneath the withered leaves — the moss 
below the drip of snow — the flowers that give their bosoms to 
the first South wind that wooes — the sad and timid violets that 
only bear the gaze of love from eyes half closed — the ferns, where 
fancy gives a thousand forms with but a single plan — the green 
and sunny slopes enriched with daisy's silver and the cowslip's 
gold. 

As in the leafless woods some tree aflame with life stands like a 
rapt poet in the heedless crowd, so stood this man among his 
fellow-men. 

All there is of leaf and bud, of flower and fruit, of painted insect 
life, and all the winged and happy children of the air that Summer 
holds beneath her dome of blue, were known and loved by him. 

He loved the yellow Autumn fields, the golden stacks, the happy 
homes of men, the orchard's bending boughs, the sumach's flags of 
flame, the maples with transfigured leaves, the tender yellow of 
the beech, the wondrous harmonies of brown and gold — the vines 
where hang the clustered spheres of wit and mirth. He loved the 
winter days, the whirl and drift of snow, — all forms of frost, — the 
rage and fury of the storm, when in the forest desolate and stripped 
the brave old pine towers green and. grand — a prophesy of Spring. 
He heard the rhythmic sound of Nature's busy strife, the hum of 
bees, the songs of birds, the eagle's cry, the murmur of the streams, 
the sighs and lamentations of the winds and all the voices of the 
sea. He loved the shores, the vales, the crags and cliffs — the 
city's busy streets, the introspective, silent plain, the solemn splen- 
dors of the night, the silver sea of dawn and evening's clouds of 
molten gold. 

The love of Nature freed this loving man. 



31 

One by one the fetters fell ; the gratings disappeared, the sun- 
shine smote the roof, and on the floors of stone light streamed from 
open doors. He realized the darkness and despair, the cruelty and 
hate, the starless blackness of the old malignant creed. The flower 
of pity grew and blossomed in his heart. The selfish ''consola- 
tion " filled his eyes with tears. He saw that what is called the 
Christian's hope is, that among the countless billions wrecked and 
lost, a meager few perhaps may reach the eternal shore — a hope 
that like the desert rain gives neither leaf nor bud — a hope that 
gives no joy, no peace, to any great and loving soul. It is the dust 
on which the serpent feeds that coils in heartless breasts. 

Day by day the wrath and vengeance faded from the sky — the 
Jewish God grew vague and dim — the threats of torture and eternal 
pain grew vulgar and absurd, and all the miracles seemed strangely 
out of place. They clad the Infinite in motley garb, and gave to 
aureoled heads the cap and bells. 

Touched by the pathos of all human life, knowing the shadows 
that fall on every heart, — the thorns in every path, the sighs, the 
sorrows, and the tears that lie between a mother's arms and death's 
embrace, — this great and gifted man denounced, denied, and damned 
with all his heart the fanged and frightful dogma that souls were 
made to feed the eternal hunger — ravenous as famine — of a God's 
revenge. 

Take out this fearful, fiendish, heartless lie, — compared with 
which all other lies are true, — and the great arch of orthodox 
religion, crumbling, falls. 

To the average man the Christian hell and heaven are only words. 
He has no scope of thought. He lives but in a dim, impoverished 
now. To him the past is dead — the future still unborn. He 
occupies with downcast eyes that narrow line of barren, shifting 
sand that lies between the flowing seas. But Genius knows all 
time. For him the dead all live and breathe and act their countless 
parts again. All human life is in his now, and every moment 
feels the thrill of all to be. 

No one can overestimate the good accomplished by this marvelous, 
many-sided man. He helped to slay the heart-devouring monster 
of the Christian world. He tried to civilize the Church, to humanize 



32 

the creeds, to soften pious breasts of stone, to take the fear from 
mother's hearts, the chains of creed from every brain, to put the 
star of hope in every sky and over every grave. 

Attacked on every side, maligned by those who preached the law 
of love, he wavered not, but fought whole-hearted to the end. 

Obstruction is but virtue's foil. From thwarted light leaps color's 
flame — the stream impeded has a song. 

He passed from harsh and cruel creeds to that serene philosophy 
that has no place for pride or hate, that threatens no revenge, that 
looks on sin as stumblings of the blind, and pities those who fall, 
knowing that in the souls of all there is a sacred yearning for the 
light. He ceased to think of man as something thrust upon the 
world — an exile from some other sphere. He felt at last that men 
are part of Nature's self, — kindred of all life, — the gradual growth of 
countless years ; that all the sacred books were helps until out- 
grown, and all religions, rough and devious paths that man has 
worn with weary feet in sad and painful search for truth and peace. 
To him these paths were wrong, and yet all gave the promise of 
success. He knew that all the streams, no matter how they wander, 
turn, and curve amid the hills and rocks, or linger in the lakes and 
pools, must some time reach the sea. 

These views enlarged his soul and made him patient with the 
world, and while the wintry snows of age were falling on his head. 
Spring, with all her wealth of bloom, was in his heart. 

The memory of this ample man is now a part of Nature's wealth. 
He battled for the rights of men. His heart was with the slave. 
He stood against the selfish greed of millions banded to protect the 
pirate's trade. His voice was for the right when Freedom's friends 
were few. He taught the Church to think and doubt. He did not 
fear to stand alone. His brain took counsel of his heart. To every 
foe he offered reconciliation's hand. He loved this land of ours, and 
added to its glory through the world. He was the greatest orator 
that stood within the pulpit's narrow curve. He loved the liberty 
of speech. There was no trace of bigot in his blood. He was a 
brave and generous man, and so, with reverent hands, I place this 
tribute on his tomb. 

ROBERT G. INGERSOLL. 

New York City. 



MR. GEORGE W. CABLE. 

THE breadth of Henry Ward Beecher's generous nature reached 
over the differences between himself and other men and made 
it easy for him to draw near in spirit to every one to whom he drew 
near in the body. He found it no effort to enter into sympathy and 
helpful counsel with the highest and the lowest, — nay, the very 
highest and very lowest. 

Several times I have lived day after day under the same roof with 
him. Every moment 1 have ever spent with him seems to me still 
one of special privilege. He united larger proportions of strength 
and benevolence than any other man I ever knew. He had a buoy- 
ant mirth, a pure love of play that rarely stays with men after they 
leave boyhood behind ; but his was as fresh and abundant and pure 
at seventy-three as one could wish to see in a youth of eighteen. 

Many will testify to the openness of his nature. The windows 
of his inner counsels seemed always standing wide open. It has 
never seemed to me credible that he could keep a secret of his own. 
Some men cannot bear the constraint of a buttoned and tied throat ; 
they must have air, air — down into their very bosoms. That 
seemed to me to be true of him in his moral nature. As far as he 
could take thought of himself, he was careful for one thing — his 
character; reputation was another. He seemed to come nearer 
counting it mere dross than — even than men ought to. 

He seemed to live by moral courage. He loved to feel himself 
put to proof. He loved warfare, if only the weapons were the 
weapons of peace and love and he could be on the side he believed 
in as the line of right and of mercy. He loved the strife that makes 
for better peace and deeper love. The result was he never had to 
spare the faults of any person of community lest he should "lose 
his influence " there. Love was his motive, his influence, and the 
impulse to which he appealed. The power of his religious teach- 
ings was — among other things of which many will speak — a 
degree of condescension that was almost condescension without 
degree. Nearer than any other preacher within my limited knowl- 
edge, he imposed no conditions of salvation upon sinning men and 
women save what Christ would have imposed had the Master stood 
in his footprints. He said to me once, *' I have taken atheists into 

3 



34 

my Sabbath-school and put them to teaching friendless boys such 
things of Scripture as they could honestly vouch for ; and some 
such are to-day among the truest and most fruitful Christians in 
my church/' 

We cannot truly call the departure of such men from the earth a 
loss to the world. When the fruit is ripe, let it be picked. A man 
of worth who has filled out the span of human life never can attain 
his greatest worth or might except by dying. '* Except the corn 
of wheat fall into the ground, it abideth alone." The world will 
gather more fruit and gather it the sooner because that great tree 
lies felled with all its laden branches pouring their fruitage out upon 
the sod. ** He — all the more — being dead, yet speaketh." 

GEORGE W. CABLE. 

Northampton, Mass. 



THE REV. PROFESSOR DAVID SWING. 

IN looking over the great career of Henry Ward Beecher, the 
greatest years of his wonderful life were, in my opinion, those 
lying between 1845 ^"d 1865. That group of twenty years was 
made tremendous by the great ideas which lay beneath them. 
These great years would have been thirty, had not his large themes 
died from fulfillment. His mind and body were equal to a longer 
service, but England needed no longer any instruction as to America ; 
Kansas needed no more intercession ; the slaves needed no more 
of the eloquence of abolition. The cathedral of liberty had been 
completed, and the architect had only to go inside and become a 
worshiper. For twenty years this wonderful man worked for the 
human race, then he wrought twenty more years for his parish, 
this last score of summers being also full of power, but not to be 
compared with the time when the toil was for the nation, and the 
tasks the greatest upon earth. In the greater period he seemed 
under the employ of the people to plead their cause in politics and 
religion. His pulpit moved around in the daily press, and was on 
the banks of the Ohio and the Missouri, while, as the old Scottish 



35 

clans sprang forth from the bushes when their chieftain gave a blast 
on his trumpet, the audiences of this evangelist issued at his 
call from all the hills of the East and the waving grass of the West. 
The public services of Daniel Webster did not cover so wide a space 
of time, nor did the great career of Abraham Lincoln take in so 
many circles of the sun ; to Henry Ward Beecher must be given the 
fame and gratitude for a battle long fought, and well fought to 
the final perfect triumph. He performed a tremendous work, and 
now, when his grave is made in a nation which is a unit, a nation 
dedicated indeed to liberty, a nation whose South is pressing on 
toward industry, wealth, education ; a republic whose name is now 
respected by every throne and every cottage throughout the civilized 
world, — that grave ought to catch from the whole country its 
mingled flowers and its tears. 

DAVID SIVING. 
Chicago. 



MISS EMMA ABBOTT. 

THE whole civilized world mourns the great loss suffered in the 
death of Henry Ward Beecher, and thousands of hearts are 
aching at the departure of one whose noble soul was filled with love 
and charity for all mankind, and whose humanity was as broad and 
glorious and far-reaching as the blessed sunshine. How his words 
of comfort have sustained those whose burdens seemed greater 
than they could bear, how many thousands of erring ones he has 
turned from the paths of evil, and how many sorrowing hearts he 
has comforted, the good Father, who loves us ail, knows, and will 
reward. 

Henry Ward Beecher was the greatest preacher of the Gospel 
since the days of Paul, and like Paul when nearing the shadow of 
the grave, he could give this testimony with a full heart : ''For me 
to live is Christ, and to die is gain/' 

EMMA ABBOTT. 
Pittsburgh. 



36 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

A MEMORY OF A SERMON. 

OUT of the past comes forth one Sabbath-day, 
A silvering head uplifted from the crowd 
That the great preacher's eloquence could sway 
Like wind-swept wheat ; a voice not low nor loud. 

Varying from gentle to impetuous force 
As changeful inspirations struck the keys 

Of utterance ; like a torrent in its course. 
Breaking apart into new harmonies. 

Unspoken thoughts rose, struggling underneath 
The current of expression, deepening still 

The emphasis of full and steady breath 

That, poised in silence, seemed the house to fill. 

Slow came the words, as when swift waters lie 
Calmed in the pool whereunto they have run : 

'* Brethren, this will 1 strive for till 1 die — 
Union in Christ, his sundered flock made one/' 

The voice is hushed ; the impulse that it gave 
Is moving onward like an army's tread ; 

The man who helped the outcast and the slave, 
And loved the little children, is not dead ! 

He lived in this great human family 
As in the all-embracing church of God. 

He lives here still ; a freer path have we 
Since with so free a step our earth he trod. 

The petty shibboleths of sect and clan 

His lips refused, rejected to the end ; 
His manhood met itself in every man, 

He counted even his enemy his friend. 

What grander glory to attain than this ? 
To be an overflow of God, a force 



37 

Magnetically fusing lives in his, 

The father of all spirits, our life's source. 

There are men — he was one — whose atmosphere 
Breathes freshening vigor through earth's drowsy air : 

The master in the servant so draws near. 
And hearts leap up His sacrifice to share. 

The day is dawning ; beautiful the glow 
Upon the mountains, of Christ's coming feet; 

And the prophetic heavens already know 

His world redeemed. His church in Him complete, 

The purpose this man lived for cannot die, 
The fire is kindled, and the work begun ; 

And still he urges, from the neighboring sky, 
**0 brethren, in the name of Christ, be one! " 

LUCY LARCOM. 
Beverly, Mass. 



MR. GEORGE W. CHILDS. 

To the personal sorrow that the death of Henry Ward Beecher 
brought with it to friends on both sides of the Atlantic, there 
was added the loss of a gifted public censor on large affairs. It was 
not Mr. Beecher's practice to discuss such affairs from the senti- 
mental side alone, and he seldom allowed fervor to usurp the office 
of facts. From his conclusions and his opinions hearers might 
often differ, but there was little room for doubt that he had studied 
the case by way of preparation. A large part of the preacher's 
influence over his hearers was due to his abounding physical health 
and his joyousness of nature. He presented nearly always a cheer- 
ful outlook; he trusted to common sense to decide questions of 
personal or public duty. This extended his influence widely over 
minds non-receptive to what is usually called preaching. 



38 

His renown was not built exclusively or even mostly upon his 
achievements as one of the very few supremely able pulpit orators 
of his day. On a par with his gift of rare eloquence were his 
sturdy and stalwart self-reliance and independence of character; his 
earnest and uncompromising patriotism ; his universal sympathy 
for the suffering and oppressed ; and his championship of the cause 
of liberty for all men, in all countries, under all circumstances. His 
repartees had a quality that enlightened as well as penetrated. They 
were arguments in a flash of lightning. He seemed, as a preacher, 
to put himself in the pews, rather than to lecture from the pulpit. 
He had some of the qualities that make the Methodist circuit-rider 
and the Catholic missionary powers in their offices, and had no 
more air of condescension as from man to man than Abraham 
Lincoln had. Like Lincoln, he stood on many occasions for incar- 
nate common sense. 

GEORGE fV. CHILDS. 

Philadelphia. 



HON. ALONZO B. CORNELL. 

FOR forty years Henry Ward Beecher commanded the respectful 
attention of the American people without becoming tiresome 
or unwelcome. In pulpit, press, and popular address, he made 
almost daily expression upon an endless variety of subjects, and 
was probably listened to by a larger number of persons than any 
other man of his generation. Frank, fearless, and eloquent in 
address, seldom an auditorium could accommodate the multitude 
seeking admission where he was announced to speak. Unrivaled 
as a preacher of the gospel ; matchless as a popular orator ; tireless 
as a champion of human rights ; versatile in knowledge ; profound 
in thought, and of the broadest liberality in his views, he exerted 
a powerful influence in advancing the intelligence and elevating 
the morality of mankind. His life-work, fairly considered, consti- 
tutes a record of intellectual activity and achievement quite 

unprecedented in our history. 

ALONZO B. CORNELL. 

New York City. 



39 



GENERAL J. M. SCHOFIELD. 

NOT being so fortunate as to have known Mr. Beecher personally, 
yet his personality seemed for many years nearly as famil- 
iar to me as that of any one with whom I have been closely asso- 
ciated. I have long esteemed him as one of the very greatest 
men of the age. In him great intellectual endowment was most 
happily united with nobleness of soul, the most ardent patriotism 
with the broadest philanthropy, and the most exalted religious faith 
with Christian love and charity superior to all creeds and yearning 
to embrace all mankind. Mr. Beecher's memory must ever be 
dear to all patriotic Americans, and especially to every Union sol- 
dier, and I gladly pay my humble tribute of reverence and respect 
to the memory of so great and good a fellow-citizen. 

J. M. SCHOFIELD. 
Governor's Island, New York Harbor. 



MR. DION BOUCICAULT. 

IT was in the editorial rooms of the New York ''Tribune," just 
thirty years ago, that I first met Henry Ward Beecher. It was either 
Charles A. Dana or Horace Greeley that made us known to each 
other. We had appeared as antagonists in the columns of that 
journal, Mr. Beecher attacking the stage and I defending it. One 
phrase in my article seemed to amuse him ; it was where it was 
urged that ' ' there was more crime and debauchery committed on a 
Sunday than on any other day of the week, but let us not be 
uncharitable enough to believe that this fact is attributable to the 
churches being open on that day, and the theaters shut." Mr. 
Beecher remarked that this kind of sparring was '* hitting under the 
belt." We spoke at length, and I found that he held very deeply 
rooted opinions on this subject. 

Three years ago, we met again in Denver. To my surprise, he 
recalled our interview of 1857, and our little battle in the columns 
of the " Tribune." With a frankness that was the principal charm 



40 

of his grand self, he told me he had learned amongst other truths how 
wrong he was in the prejudice he had entertained against the stage. 
** There is/' said he, ''good and evil in everything, and it is the 
mission of the Christian to cultivate the good and root out the evil." 
He went on to enumerate the number of great men from Sophocles 
to Shakespeare, nobles of the human race, that had been the children 
of the drama. I remarked that many sincere and good people 
objected to the stage because its very soul was a fiction, and its art 
was a moral conveyed in a falsehood. After a reflection of a moment, 
he remarked, almost to himself, *' And the parables of our Saviour?" 
Beecher fills a grave. But no man can fill the grave that he has 
left in the world above the sod and under the sun. ''He was a 
man, take him for all in all. We shall not look upon his like again." 

DION BOUCICAULT. 

New York City. 



MR. NOAH BROOKS. 

OF Henry Ward Beecher it may be truly said that he touched 
nothing that he did not ornament. His was a comprehensive 
and all-embracing mind. There was nothing too vast to discourage 
his adventurous curiosity, nothing too small to engage his earnest 
attention. Everything that touched humanity at any point was of 
interest to him. And upon all of these things he poured the light 
of one of the most richly endowed minds ever given to man. His 
career stretched over some of the most momentous events in our 
history as a nation. He saw the peopling of the New West, the 
building of great cities, the rise of the slave power, the growth 
of the spirit of human liberty, the slaveholder's rebellion, the 
downfall of the accursed institution, the restoration of honorable 
peace and the rehabilitation of the New South. In all these 
mighty matters he had some share ; and in many of them he put 
forth a giant's strength to the pulling down of the strongholds of 
wrong and crime. And, through all these years, often tense with 
portentous events, how zealously he has filled the measure of his 
days with the innumerable cares of pastor, friend, husband, father, 
neighbor, and citizen, it is impossible to describe. 



41 

It cannot be hoped for any human being that he shall be able by 

industry, self-denial, study, research, or training to be a Beecher. 

His genius was God-given. He was one of those rare men of whom 

we have few examples in the history of the race. Generations may 

pass before another worthy of an intimate comparison to him shall 

appear upon the earth. 

NOAH BROOKS. 

Newark, New Jersey. 



M. DOCTOR LOUIS PASTEUR. 

WERE it not for my health, which for some months past has 
been, and is still, so very poor, I would feel myself impelled 
to send you a final tribute of respect to the late Rev. Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

Prevented by illness to do this, I should like at least to express 
to the widow and to the family of this noble man the sympathy 
that I feel in their sorrow, — a sorrow shared by humanity every- 
where. 

L. PASTEUR. 
Arbois (Jura), France. 



REV. THEODORE L. CUYLER, D. D. 

DURING the most brilliant period of Mr. Beecher's marvelous 
career I was associated very intimately with him on the 
platform and in various reformatory movements. I knew him 
thoroughly, I loved him intensely. Among the great galaxy of the 
champions of freedom which embraced Sumner, Chase, Garrison, 
Phillips, and Whittier, the star which hung over Brooklyn Heights 
rode resplendent. It was a guiding star to many a refugee from the 
house of bondage. The generation of Americans now coming on 
the stage can scarcely comprehend what a degree of unflinching 



42 

courage it required to be a champion of freedom forty years ago. 
But Beecher never grew purple in the lips. That Harry Percy of 
liberty never showed the white feather or turned his back. Of his 
marvelous charms of eloquence 1 need no more write than of the 
grandeur of Handel's oratorios. It was something to dream about. 
His voice was as sweet as a lute, and as loud as a trumpet. In its 
tenderest pathos, that witching voice touched the fount of tears: 
When he rose into impassioned sublimity ** they that heard him said 
that it thundered." And now that the marvelous voice is stilled 
in death, we will all confess that we shall not hear its like again. 

Henry Ward Beecher's place in American history is sure. As an 
orator he will take rank with Whitefield, Patrick Henry, and Phillips. 
As the champion of human rights his proud place will be beside 
John Quincy Adams and Charles Sumner. And in the hearts of 
the negro freedmen the name of Beecher will nestle alongside of 
that of Abraham Lincoln. 

THEODORE L. CUYLER. 
Brooklyn. 



MRS. SARA J. LIPPINCOTT. (Grace Greenwood.) 

To me the death of Henry Ward Beecher, an event so infinitely 
sad to those who knew him intimately, has brought a pro- 
found dejection, a strange sense of discouragement and impover- 
ishment, which increases in heaviness day by day ; for, perhaps 
from being so far away from my country, I had difficulty at first 
in realizing her loss as an absolute inexorable fact. I had not met 
Mr. Beecher of late years. I never had the honor of a familiar per- 
sonal acquaintance with him, and this feeling of depression and 
deprivation would seem scarcely natural, were it not that for me, 
who am inclined to take rather a mournful and morbid view of life, to 
rebel against the inevitable and inscrutable, and to see if there is 
not more evil than good, more suffering than happiness among all 
God's creatures, this wonderful many-sided man has always been 
the ideal and embodiment of courageous cheerfulness, and uncon- 



43 

sciously I was helped by him while he lived his strong, cheery life 
on earth. Such a life is a tonic for all the world. Mr. Beecher was 
an optimist from a happy organization, and a philosopher from prin- 
ciple. To him nature revealed her utmost brightness and lightness, 
for him God smiled through his most darksome providences. He 
was the prophet of good cheer. He foretold '' a good time com- 
ing" for the most unfortunate of his fellow-men, but he took his 
good time out of the days as they passed. He must have suffered 
some fierce and fiery onslaughts from the demons of doubt, dis- 
couragement, and despondency, but he never surrendered. He kept 
his good spirits up by work, and his work by good spirits. He did 
not, Luther-like, fling his inkstand at the devil, only his ink, — mak- 
ing the tempter blacker and uglier than ever. I have always had 
especial need of such sunny, yet bracing and breezy moral and 
intellectual influence as he exerted. I remember that in the old 
days, when I passed out from Plymouth Church, the sun was always 
shining for me whatever the weather, and that I found my heart 
had been lightened of some burden of care, regret, or dread, by a 
lift of brotherly sympathy, by a few tears shed for the woes or 
wrongs of others, or by a little hearty, healthful laughter, which 
had to come. 

So I leave to other friends and admirers of the great preacher to 
pay tributes to his genius, his broad humanity, his matchless ora- 
tory, his patriotism and piety, while I offer mine to that quality 
more rare than eloquence, more heroic than heroism, more sweet 
and serving than much which is called religion, — his simple, manly, 
steadfast cheerfulness. Let other hands bring to his grave laurels 
for his greatness, rich, red, deep-hearted roses for his humanity, 
costly and fragrant exotics as emblems of his rare poetic gifts and 
brilliant social qualities, but let me lay thereon, as types of that 
hopeful, helpful characteristic which I so admired and coveted, a 
simple bunch of spring-flowers, from the woods and fields, — the 
brave arbutus, thrusting aside the dry leaves of a dead past and 
daring keen winds and biting frosts ; the primrose, laughing up 
from the yet brown turf; tiny buttercups and daisies ; and even that 
small prophet of the sun, the golden dandelion, — common brighten- 
ers of our common ways, which we walk among with lightened 
steps, not knowing what cheers us. 



44 

For his people, the going hence of their great friend means so 
much gone out of life which helped them to bear life, under its 
hardest and saddest conditions, that they cannot in their human 
weakness rejoice for him who will rejoice them no more. It will 
long be hard for them even to smile over recollections of his pleas- 
ant jests and quaint sayings, for thinking that the voice that uttered 
them is silent forever, and that the face once illumined by the flash 
of wit and the glow of happy fancies is hid away from them in 
deep stillness and ever-during night. 



GRACE GREENIVOOD. 



Milan, Italy. 



HON. SAMUEL S. COX. 

i OFTEN heard Henry Ward Beecher upon the platform, and not 
infrequently in the pulpit. From certain peculiar relations to him, 
or those who are near to him, 1 have had occasion to know him 
personally. Aside from his social magnetism, which drew so many 
friends around him, aside from the quick susceptibility which he 
had in all matters of taste, I think the capital element in his nature, 
as developed in his sermons, as well as in his lectures, was a large, 
roundabout, homely way of saying things which attracted the gen- 
eral attention and left an indelible impression. To produce this 
impression 1 noticed that he, like others of his family, including his 
father, whom I knew, drew his similes from the domestic rela- 
tions, — from the hearth, from all home life and those associations 
connected with children and parents, brothers and sisters. There 
was a simplicity and directness about these illustrations that gave 
force to the idea conveyed. 

In dealing with matters connected with our own country of which 
I have been observant, and especially since the war, when the gen- 
erosities of our nature were most called into vogue, he never failed 
to take the liberal side. I remember once when Mr. Beecher was on 
a lecturing visit to Washington, a bill was pending for the payment to 
an old captain in the navy of a small sum which had been found due 
to him in his accounts. A leader in the House violently attacked the 



45 

bill because the old naval officer, when the war broke out, had 
sided with his State, although too old to take any active part as a 
belligerent. This bill led to quite an acrimonious debate, in which 
nearly all the passions of the war were involved, and all the gener- 
osities connected with our better feeling toward those who were 
reinstated in our councils were also involved. I took some part in 
the debate, and noticed that I had very earnest applause from a gen- 
tleman seated all alone in the diplomatic gallery. On looking round, 
I recognized Henry Ward Beecher ! This is but one illustration of a 
thousand of the liberality of his nature ; and it is well to understand, 
when speaking of his public services as an index of his character, 
that there was not one attribute, so far as my observation went, 
looking to retaliation or resentment toward those of the South who 
had been in arms against the Government. 

His rhetorical powers to me were remarkable, and he could sway 
men and women and hold them in a spell of enchantment with 
wonderful power. I could not see that to the end of his life he had 
failed in any effort in ''gracing the noble fervor of an hour" by 

words instinct with great deeds. 

s. s. COX. 

Washington. 



PROFESSOR ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL. 

I HAVE no special claim to justify a contribution to this memorial 
volume in honor of Henry Ward Beecher beyond that of being a 
sincere admirer of his spirit and work. All who ever heard Mr. 
Beecher, as well as the larger number who are only familiar with his 
achievements, cannot but revere the memory of so great a spokes- 
man of patriotism and humanity. His death is a loss to the age, for 
his influence extended throughout the Old World and the New ; and 
I cannot wish better for our future than that the example set by Mr. 
Beecher of bravery, honesty, public spirit, and geniality may be 
widely emulated. He bequeathed to us a mold of greatness in his 
record. 

ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 
Washington. 



46 

HON. DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 

To me, Henry Ward Beecher was at once a great preacher, 
lecturer, and author. His sermons were unlike any other that 
I ever heard, always full of thought, often eloquent, and sometimes 
sparkling with a quiet humor which quickened the attention of 
his hearers. His lectures were a mixture of wit and eloquence, 
and when, as at the time of the antislavery agitation and the civil 
war, he was greatly in earnest, his sentences ground to powder 
the arguments of his adversaries. His books will always keep their 
place in the library. Mr. Beecher's influence has been great upon 
his generation. He spoke from more pulpits and platforms than 
any other man of his time, and the good that he did can hardly be 

measured. 

DAVID DUDLEY FIELD. 

New York City. 



HON. MURAT HALSTEAD. 

FROM Mr. Beecher's life the young men of the day can learn a 
most valuable lesson, — that of his enthusiastic and persevering 
industry. The amount of labor that he performed was prodigious, 
and he did not flinch, from his boyhood until the day when he was 
stricken by the wing of the angel of death ; and he never toiled with 
greater assiduity and intensity than through the last weeks of his 
life in writing the second and unfinished volume .of his '*Life of 
Christ." I may here recite the lines of Longfellow on the death 
of Hawthorne : 

'' Who shall lift the wand of magic power, 
The lost dew regain? 
The unfinished window in Aladdin's tower 
Unfinished must remain." 

Mr. Beecher was not born to rest in this world, but to strive 
always. He was like the blooded horse that is carried on by his 
inherent fire, which forbids lash or spur, but runs the race to the 



47 

end, — the race that endures until the immortal spark passes to its 

brighter part in the inextinguishable illumination. He was one of 

the master workingmen of the world, and has entered into rest. 

His death leaves a great gap in the ranks of the men of mark on 

the horizon of the world, like that made by the fall of one of the 

grand old trees through whose lofty head we have been accustomed 

to behold the glories of the skies, and that seemed firm and familiar 

as the hills. 

MURAT HALSTEAD. 
Cincinnati. 



REV. NEWMAN HALL, D. D., LL. D. 

MY sorrowful and strong disapproval of some of Mr. Beecher's 
theological utterances in later years in no degree lessens my 
admiration of his genius, his unrivaled eloquence, and his labors as 
a philanthropist. He has been a link of brotherhood between New 
and Old England, and has left an indelible mark on the history of 
his own country. His life-long vindication of the rights of human- 
ity, and especially his persistent advocacy of freedom for the colored 
race, when such advocacy was generally denounced, entitle him to 
the high plane he has won among the benefactors of mankind. 

NEIVMAN HALL. 
London. 



GENERAL WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS. 

THE patriotic enthusiasm for our country, the vigor, eloquence, 
and effectiveness with which Henry Ward Beecher spoke and 
wrote for the Union made us kin. It has seemed to me that a noble 
hatred of wrong and injustice always vigorously moved his impet- 
uous nature, and yet but rarely so that pretended victims secured 
his services for the undeserving. His thoughts seemed to lift the 



48 

imagination toward a higher and better life, while his energetic, act- 
ive life moved people to become better citizens, better neighbors, 
and better men and women. In a life of rare usefulness and pub- 
lic prominence, he set a noble example of speaking and acting on 
his convictions in an age and country when men who have the 
courage of their convictions are always needed and none too 

numerous. 

IV. S. ROSECRANS. 

Washington. 



REV. WILLIAM ORMISTON, D. D., LL. D. 

FOR many years 1 regularly read the published sermons of Henry 
Ward Beecher, long before I ever had the pleasure of meeting 
him personally, and I was struck with the wondrous power and 
versatility of the preacher. Notwithstanding the fact that his the- 
ology did not always agree with mine, 1 was ever mentally stimu- 
lated and greatly instructed by his eloquent address. His productions 
had a peculiar charm and exercised a great power over me. 

In 1870, I came to New York and received a characteristic warm 
welcome from Mr. Beecher, and I was delighted with my personal 
intercourse with him. I was perfectly charmed by his frank and 
genial manners, and greatly admired him. 1 am glad that 1 knew 
him. I seldom heard him preach, but had the privilege of frequently 
listening to his public lectures and addresses, many of which were 
masterpieces of forensic and persuasive eloquence, and roused his 
audience to the highest pitch of lofty enthusiasm. As an orator on 
public occasions, 1 deem him without a rival. Others may have 
excelled him in some aspects, but, as a speaker, with a resistless 
magnetism to control and move great masses of people on any 
philanthropic or patriotic theme, he was unsurpassed. 

He has, in my judgment, left no man in America to-day of equal 
potency as a speaker, or who can so touch the hearts of an Ameri- 
can audience, or so effectively present the position and claims of the 
United States to an English assembly as he did a few years ago.* 
He was a man of strong and fearless convictions, of dauntless and 
heroic courage, of broad and boundless charity, — a man to be 



49 

greatly beloved while living, and fondly remembered when dead. 
His name will be placed high on the list of the nation's most gifted 
and honored sons, and it may be fitly said of him what Antony said 
of Brutus: 

"His life was gentle ; and the elements 

So mixed in him, that nature might stand up 

And say to all the world, ' This was a man.' 

W. ORMISTON. 
New York City. 



DR. GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 

THE magnificent gifts which characterized Henry Ward Beecher 
as a platform speaker, and his rare power in the pulpit, are 
themes which every man in the country can talk about. Of all the 
throngs which every year pour into New York from every section 
of the Union, for pleasure or business, hardly a man thought he 
had finished his work well until he had been to hear Beecher, and 
had noted down in his memory some quaint saying or incident for 
recital on his return home. He was phenomenal in his ability to 
make people love him. He was by nature so kindly, so genuinely 
generous, that he took you captive at the very start. And although 
he was conscious of his vast influence over the minds and hearts 
of the people, he somehow never acquired a lofty manner of con- 
descension when he spoke to ordinary folk, but was as familiar as 
though your brains and his were made out of the same sort of stuff, 
though both of you knew well enough that they were not. The 
truth is, he preached his greatest sermons so easily that he hardly 
knew himself how he did it ; and while he felt gratified at what 
had been done, he was oftentimes humbled in the midst of his 
triumph by a depressing fear that he would never again be able to 
equal that accomplishment. All this signifies that Henry Ward 
Beecher was a genius, with the peculiarities of temperament which 
the word suggests. 

GEORGE H. HEPIVORTH. 
New York City. 

4 



50 

MR. W. W. CORCORAN. 

NEVER having had the advantage of meeting Mr. Beecher, or of 
proving by my personal experience the extraordinary power he 
possessed as a pulpit and platform orator, I cannot properly offer any 
testimony of my own in the hope of adding evidence to the esteem 
in which he was held by his friends, or of swelling the applause 
which waited on him at the hands of the people whose hearts he 
touched, and whose opinions he swayed. Gifted as he was with a 
faculty of public utterance by which he often caused his words to 
echo throughout the whole land, no testimony to his commanding 
powers of mind and of popular oratory can be so strong as that 
which may be found in the wild enthusiasm he excited and the 
strong antagonisms he sometimes provoked. 

That his last days were spent in the cause of civic reconciliation 
and of national fraternity, should be a source of congratulation to all 
his countrymen. 

IV, W. CORCORAN. 

Washington. 



HON. J. B. GRINNELL. 

WITHOUT military exploits or official civil service, Henry Ward 
Beecher was daring in confronting public opinion with match- 
less speech, unique personality, and rigid example. Alone he stands 
as the American divine, who chose to make his place rather than 
fill one made, and gathered and held for forty years the largest Chris- 
tian congregation ever convened on this continent. He was an 
artist, dexterous in the use of the moralist's weapons, supreme in 
separating dross from gold in the fiery alembics of a soul impatient 
with device or neutrality. He was indeed a bold patriot, an ardent 
lover, a humble Christian, and a princely preacher. For years he 
molded my thoughts more than did any other man of the present 
time, and 1 am proud to offer this humble tribute to his memory. 

y. B. GRINNELL. 
Grinnell, Iowa. 



51 

HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. 

To assert the genius, the remarkable powers, or the fame of 
Henry Ward Beecher is as needless for this generation as to 
certify the light of the sun. The diversity of his gifts and acquire- 
ments enabled him to appear with distinction before vast numbers 
of his fellow-men in more varied fields than perhaps any other man 
of his time. As orator, writer, preacher, philanthropist, and leader 
of sentiment, his position was so conspicuous, so almost solitary, 
and universally known that testimony is silenced by the conscious- 
ness that it is so needless. His own words are not mute, nor will 
they be mute as long as anything we say of him is remembered. 

ROSCOE CONKLING. 
New York City. 



MRS. J. C. CROLY (''Jenny June"). 

MR. Beecher was, perhaps, the greatest man that has lived in 
this century: the broadest, most human, most sympathetic, 
most comprehensive in his recognition of excellencies and tolera- 
tion of men's ideas and opinions. The strength of his feelings 
alone prevented him from putting the finest finishing-touch of art 
upon his magnificent oratory; but this instant and intense respon- 
siveness added greatly to his power as a leader, and gave it that 
strength of personal influence which no attacks could weaken. No 
worthy cause wanted a champion while he lived, no individual 
could be honored if Henry Ward Beecher was absent. His mighty 
congregation was drawn from the ends of the earth, and the open 
doors of his church were maintained with loving liberality by its 
members, whom he educated to this spirit of fellowship with the 
whole human race. There will be other great preachers and other 
great men, but it will be long before preacher and man are united 
in another Henry Ward Beecher. 

JENNY JUNE. 
New York City 



52 

HON. PRESTON B. PLUMB, 

UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM KANSAS. 

THE people of Kansas share with all the English-speaking race in 
the admiration and respect which Mr. Beecher's talents and 
character inspired. The charm of his eloquence, the force and clear- 
ness of his demonstrations, the skill and power of his controversial 
essays, his patience and fortitude under trials, — these are qualities 
and attributes happily united in the character and career of the 
illustrious divine. 

Perhaps even more conspicuous was the influence of his person- 
ality upon those with whom he was immediately associated. This 
was strikingly exhibited in the founding and phenomenal develop- 
ment of a religious institution, which, great as it is in the varied 
elements which dignify and strengthen human association, still 
derives its chief title to fame from his matchless leadership. 

The people of Kansas have special reason for offering their tribute 
to the memory of Henry Ward Beecher. He was their friend when 
friends were sorely needed. When the future of that Common- 
wealth and the fate of Freedom itself trembled in the balance, no 
voice more eloquent or more influential than his was lifted in their 
behalf. He had the wisdom to recognize the gravity of the situa- 
tion, and the boldness to advocate the only measures fitted to the 
time. He saw that the forcible encroachments of slavery could 
only be successfully resisted by force, and he assumed the respon- 
sibility of advising that the crisis be heroically met. 

Nearly a third of a century has passed since that troubled period 
ended. Many of those who participated in its struggles and trials 
still inhabit the State born of so much commotion. They and their 
successors are not likely to forget the services, the sacrifices, and 
the offerings of those to whose patriotic exertions are due, in so 
large a degree, the peaceful triumphs of these later years. In that 
notable array the name of Henry Ward Beecher will not shine less 
brightly when time shall have still further softened the asperities 
of the past and still further multiplied the fruits of the establishment 
of freedom in Kansas. 

p. B. PLUMB. 

Washington. 



53 

HON. HAMILTON FISH. 

IT was not my good fortune to have any familiar personal acquaint- 
ance with Mr. Beecher, but I have listened upon several occasions 
to public addresses delivered by him, and I need not say, always 
did so with admiration of his learning, his eloquence, and his fas- 
cinating influence upon his audience. His warm devotion to the 
Union, and his active and efficient labors in behalf of the nation 
during its struggle for existence, and his eloquent appeals in behalf 
of the freedom of the slave, will ever enshrine his name in the 

gratitude and admiration of future ages. 

HAMILTON FISH. 

New York City. 

REV. EDWARD McGLYNN, D. D. 

FOREMOST in the work of hastening the coming of the better day 
was the great man whose memory we perpetuate in these 
memorial pages. None others so well understood, as he taught 
the men of his land and time to exalt, the essentials of religion, 
pure and undefiled, in which we all agree, and to minimize the 
differences that seem to separate us. To him was given to see 
with clearer vision, to reveal with unequaled genius, and with tire- 
less energy to make common among men the meaning of Him who 
taught of old on the mount and by the sea-shore the core of all 
religion — the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. I 
cheerfully confess that from Mr. Beecher I learned, from the first 
days of my ministry, a new tenderness and fullness of meaning in 
the " Our Father," and I am glad to be able here to state that the 
theology of the old church agrees with his in this : that the essence 
of religion is in communion with God through the love of Him for 
His own sake, and in loving all men for God's sake with the best 
love with which we love ourselves, and that while sacrifice and 
sacrament, creed and ritual, prayer and sermon and song may be 
and are powerful helps and necessary manifestations of this re- 
ligion, which is love, without it they are but a mockery, a sacri- 
lege and a blasphemy. 

EDIVARD McGLYNN, 
New York City. 



54 

MRS. LAURA C. HOLLOWAY. 

HAD I not a recollection of gratitude for the welcome he gave to 
Southerners who, as exiles from home, had come to dwell 
among his friends, there would be no reason sufficient for me to 
write of Mr. Beecher, for there is not a tribute possible to offer 
his memory which has not been repeatedly bestowed. 

His genius made him a many-sided man — and his fame is un- 
equaled by that of any American of his day. Possessed of unerr- 
ing intuition and a mental outlook which made him appear prophetic, 
he was abreast if not ahead of the advanced thinkers of the age. 
But so well he knew his kind that he held himself to the pace of 
those to whom he was ministering, and if perchance he momentarily 
traveled too fast for them, his humor and pathos were powerful 
aids to successful retreat from a too-advanced position. He never 
fought his way ahead of his followers, so as to estrange even the 
weakest about him, and the absolute influence he exercised over 
his congregation made even his most ultra views on public ques- 
tions palatable to them. 

Catholicity of spirit was the mighty force he exerted to draw men 
to him, and there was enough in his thought to supply all varieties 
of natures. He was, in the occult sense in which St. Paul meant it, 
'*all things to all men.'' A Brahmin, a Parsee, a Buddhist, a 
Catholic or a Mohammedan could find points of agreement with him, 
and his largeness of nature made him a refuge for people of all 
diversities of belief. He constantly asserted the brotherhood of 
religions as well as the brotherhood of man, and no American 
preacher ever has had so many different representatives of human- 
ity listen to him as had Mr. Beecher. Those who were not 
impressed by what he said were impressed with his manner of 
saying it. He was a broad, strong, and brilliant ray of sunshine in 
the world, whose blotting out has left a great and dark void in the 
hearts of men. When his personality has faded out of the public 
mind, or, rather, when generations have succeeded the ones which 
knew him, his memory will be preserved in a shrine on which 
will be inscribed, '* He loved his fellow-men." 

LAURA C. HOLLOIVAY. 
Brooklyn. 



55 

HON. CHARLES STEWART PARNELL, M. R 

IN behalf of myself and my colleagues, I would convey an ex- 
pression of profound sympathy at the death of Henry Ward 
Beecher. His name will ever remain dear to every Irishman, and 
all lovers of liberty and justice, as one of the noblest, bravest, and 
most gifted apostles of human rights. 

CHARLES STEIVART PARNELL. 
London. 



MR. HENRY GEORGE. 

I AM glad to express my respect for the memory of Henry Ward 
Beecher, and my deep appreciation of the good work he did. 

Henry Ward Beecher encountered what in the nature of things 
must always be encountered by those who fight in the van of a 
struggle against a great wrong — ridicule, abuse, misrepresentation, 
and all but personal violence. Yet, as the good cause he espoused 
grew and strengthened, his influence grew with it, and even while 
he was yet probably the most abused and most hated man in the 
United States, he was pastor of the largest and strongest congre- 
gation in the whole country, and radiated from his pulpit an influ- 
ence that reached the remotest corners of the earth. It was not 
because of his talents alone that Henry Ward Beecher was great 
and powerful, and that there came to him that highest of all 
rewards that can come to man — the reward of seeing his own 
efforts tell perceptibly in the advancement of a great cause. His 
preaching, ridiculed and denounced by the scribes and Pharisees of 
the time as the bringing of politics into religion, the mingling of 
secular with sacred things, had in it that power which enabled early 
Christianity to sweep over the Roman world and into barbarian 
lands — the arousing of the religious sentiment to work reform on 
earth. 

And when at last the antislavery struggle burst into the con- 
suming flame of civil war, it was given to Henry Ward Beecher, not 
only to animate the patriotism and devotion that maintained the 



56 

Union, but in a foreign land to perform a notable service to his 
country and to humanity. He lived to see the great cause with 
which his name had been identified fully triumphant ; to see the 
fierce passions the strife had excited stilled to peace, to clasp in 
friendship the hands of those who had once been bitter enemies, 
and to exert in other directions an influence for good. Some lives 
are longer, but few are more full and useful than was his. 



HENRY GEORGE. 



New York City. 



REV. LYMAN ABBOTT, D. D. 

IT would be idle for me to express a recognition, and impossible 
for me to attempt an analysis of Mr. Beecher's genius. To those 
who stood nearest to him and knew him best he was as good as he 
was great, or, to speak more accurately, as great in moral and spirit- 
ual qualities as in intellectual abilities. He was most Titanesque to 
those who knew him most intimately. Absolutely without self-con- 
ceit, yet on occasion possessed with a full consciousness of his power; 
without the weakness which excessive approbativeness always 
produces, yet with that quickness of sympathy which is rarely dis- 
associated from approbativeness ; with a universal perception of all 
the phenomena of nature, yet with a purity of soul and of life 
which we usually associate only with the innocence of ignorance ; 
with great power of reserve, yet absolutely transparent, capable 
of silence, but incapable of deceit or falsehood ; generous to a fault, 
and most generous to those who had the least claim upon his 
generosity, — the self-contradictions of his nature were those of a 
character wonderfully well balanced in moral equipoise. Great men 
have faults, but the faults of Mr. Beecher were defects, not vices. 
They lay in methods of expression, and sometimes of action, never 
in the spiritual purposes which dominated and controlled him ; they 
were blemishes on the surface ; they did not poison the sap and 
fiber of his being. The secret of all lay, as I believe, in his devout 
faith, in the predominance of his spiritual faculties in what the Bible 

calls godliness. 

LYMAN ABBOTT. 
New York City. 



57 

HON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN. 

I REGARDED the late Henry Ward Beecher as one of the most emi- 
nent divines of this age, if not of all time. He did a great and 
good work in brushing away the cobwebs of time that clung around 
the old schools of theology, and in advancing the intellectual, moral, 
and social condition of mankind. And he did a grand work, as I 
know, in preserving the life and unity of the nation during the late 
rebellion. The great value of that work can only be comprehended 
and appreciated by those who intimately understood it. For that 
work his memory should be embalmed and cherished by all who 
love our country and its free institutions. 

HANNmAL HAMLIN. 
Bangor, Maine. 



REV. MARK HOPKINS, D. D., LL. D. 

SOON after Mr. Beecher was settled in Brooklyn he came to 
Williams College to address the Adelphic Union Society. The 
desire to hear him was even then so great that he was obliged to 
enter the church by one of the windows. No one who heard him 
was disappointed. After giving the address, he remained a day or 
two for trout-fishing, and during the time was my guest. Few 
men, I am sure, who have ever lived could have created, in so 
short a time, so strong a personal interest. His spontaneity was 
that of a fountain, and his sparkling and kindly talk was like the 
glad rippling of water in the sunshine. 

There was in him then, at or near its fullness, that combination 
of playfulness with insight and power that gave him such a hold 
on his friends. From that time I knew him only as the people 
knew him, but never lost my strong personal regard. This led 
me to rejoice in his subsequent success, and to sympathize with 
him in his trials. 

For that conspicuous public career on which he soon entered 
he was phenomenally endowed. His physical organization was 
attuned to every aspect and mood of nature, and was also capable 



58 

of a great amount of work and of endurance. The integrity and 
perfection of this organization he guarded and preserved by tem- 
perance; and, at the same time, as a lifelong advocate and example 
of abstinence from alcoholic and narcotic stimulants, he became a 
benefactor of his age and of his race. 

With these physical endowments it soon became evident that 
there was in him a spontaneity, not only of playfulness and social 
entertainment, but also of whole sermons and lectures, and star- 
papers and occasional speeches that burst forth and rolled on to the 
surprise and delight of the whole country. 

His pulpit began to be a point of pilgrimage for this and other 
lands, and to find his church the stranger only needed to follow 
the crowd. This continued for forty years. No such instance of 
prolonged steady power at one point, in connection with other 
labors so extended and diversified, and magnificent in their results, 
has ever been known. 

Among these incidental labors his triumphant advocacy in Eng- 
land of the cause of our Union in the hour of its peril can never be 
forgotten. Probably the world has seen no grander instance of the 
ascendency of eloquence, and of the personal power of a single 
man, and he a foreigner, in the face of prejudiced and excited mobs. 
As the result of these incidental labors he became not only a social 
reformer, but a great factor in the freeing of the slave, in the pres- 
ervation of the Union, and, ultimately, in restoring good-will 
between the North and the South. His name and work must, 
therefore, descend with benediction as an integral part of the his- 
tory of the country. 

In his wrestlings with those great problems of human life and 
destiny which have stirred thinking minds in all ages, I have wished 
for Mr. Beecher, as for all others, the freedom which he claimed ; 
but have not always gone with him in his solution of the problems. 
On these the last word has not yet been said, and we must agree 
to differ. If he did not always come out right in the end, he cast 
light by the way, and his speculations will go in with the seething 
mass till the truth shall be made clear. In the mean time we look 
with wonder at the many-sided man and his many-sided work, and 
thank God for the good he has done. 

MARK HOPKINS. 
Williams College. 



^9 

BARON BERNHARD VON TAUCHNITZ. 

I FEEL indeed honored at being invited to offer a word of eulogy 
in memory of the illustrious American who has departed from 
earth, Henry Ward Beecher, whose effective work and noble serv- 
ices in behalf of mankind have extended even throughout the Ger- 
man Empire. At this time of writing, the entire press of Germany, 
without exception, unite in proclaiming the great loss which 
America has suffered in his decease, and the high merit of his work 
and services. Thus will the memory of this great man ever endure, 
not in his country alone, but also with us in the Fatherland. 

TAUCHNITZ. 
Leipzig, Germany. 

MR. ANTHONY COMSTOCK. 

WHAT pen can describe the gifts with which the Almighty 
endowed Henry Ward Beecher? As well attempt to count 
the sands of the sea or the drops in the ocean. Who can compre- 
hend his genius ? By what standard of measurement or process 
of description can one compass his diversity of gifts ? But over and 
above all eloquence, genius, and powers, stands, in my mind, the 
grandeur of a heart so filled with love to God that he regarded all 
mankind as his brethren. Charity abounded to all. Malice had no 
place of allodgment in his heart ! Misrepresentations of what he 
said and did were abundant. These attacks were often especially 
exasperating and hard to bear; and yet, over all, in his heart seemed 
written, " Love to God," and this seemed the key-note of peace and 
joy in his life. 

Mr. Beecher endeared himself to the New- York Society for the 
Suppression of Vice and to myself by his defending and espousing 
our cause at various times. No amount of opposition, obloquy, or 
reproach which we had to encounter could daunt his courage in 
support of our cause. His eloquent voice more than once was 
heard in our behalf. 

That life that went out so quietly on Brooklyn Heights disap- 
peared as disappears the Morning Star, which sinks not down behind 



6o 

a darkened west, but melts away with the brighter effulgence of 
the rising Sun ; that life seems to whisper back the song of the 
angels, '' Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to 
men ! 

ANTHONY COMSTOCK. 
New York City. 



GENERAL JAMES LONGSTREET. 

WITH sentiments of sympathy for the friends of Henry Ward 
Beecher, I beg to express appreciation of that genius and 
labor which command admiration of the people of the nineteenth 
century. All that can be done must fail to fill the vacuum of his 
leaving, even in his ripe and beautiful years, but we may hope to 
temper the call of Him who gives of His abundance to magnify the 
harvest, of measure for measure. 

Peace be with Henry Ward Beecher, always ! Amen ! 

JAMES LONGSTREET. 
Gainesville, Georgia. 



LIEUTENANT A. W. GREELY, U. S. A. 

THE disparity of years between Mr. Beecher and myselt has 
given me less opportunity than many others to see and 
know one of America s most remarkable men. The striking point 
of Henry Ward Beecher's character to me was the manner in which 
he succeeded in making religion a matter of deep personal interest 
to his associates and hearers, instead of being a matter of theoretical 
opinion. Many of his liberal utterances of a quarter of a century 
seem in the light of to-day as prophetic of the changes which have 
been wrought in creeds and beliefs by the advance of science. Mr. 
Beecher's great breadth of mind and acute perspective faculties 



6i 

caused him frequently to avoid those seeming conflicts of science 
and religion which have so embarrassed other great preachers of 
this couotry. 

But to me Mr. Beecher has filled a place greater for a time, if 
possible, than that of teacher and preacher of religious truths. I 
allude to his remarkable series of addresses in England, at the 
commencement of our great civil war. It seemed to me then that 
the intense fire of patriotism which burned so fiercely over the 
entire North had, as it were, concentrated itself in Mr. Beecher, 
and caused his voice to go over the entire breadth of the United 
Kingdom as a flame which melted or confounded all it touched. 



Washington. 



A. IV. GREELY. 



DR. BERNARD O'REILLY. 

IRISHMEN at home and abroad have reason to remember Henry 
Ward Beecher with the most kindly feelings. He was ever ready 
to defend or to advocate Ireland's right to self-government, and few 
men denounced more eloquently the evils of British misrule in the 
Emerald Isle, or the chronic cruelties of landlord oppression. 

BERNARD O'REILLY. 
Cork, Ireland. 



GENERAL OLIVER O. HOWARD. 

1HAVE always entertained a special affection for Mr. Beecher. 
When quite a young man I once attended Plymouth Church, 
and the sermon he then preached affected me deeply at the time 
and left an indelible impression on my mind. Many times there- 
after, during my life, I have had evidences of the confidence and 
kindness of this wonderful man of God. I have met him often in 
traveling, and been cheered by his apt and abundant anecdotes and 



62 

by his wholesome, hearty sentiments, which, to me, were always 
replete with encouragement. I have sat with family friends listen- 
ing to his lectures, and have prayed to God to give that m^ly man 
a long life. He has often helped me, in moments of depression and 
weakness, to hold up my head, lift up my heart and take courage; 
and this, of course, all unconsciously to himself. And so I have 
no doubt his strong, fearless spirit, helped by the Holy One, has 
thrilled and aided other men — thousands of them — who have come 
within the sound of his voice or the sphere of his influence. I feel 
his death as a great personal loss. 



San Francisco. 



OLIVER O. HOIVARD. 



REV. SAMUEL FRANCIS SMITH, D. D. 

HENRY Ward Beecher, the great preacher, whose eloquent 
voice has been silenced by death, is not to be estimated by 
any common and accepted standard of judgment. It is not right to 
weigh him by ordinary scales, or to define his length and breadth 
and height by reference to any Procrustean measure. 

As a few mountain-peaks stand out against the blue firmament, 
in grand separation from all their fellows, so Mr. Beecher seems to 
have towered in lone conspicuity among his brethren. He was 
not greater than all, but he was distinct from all, holding a position 
all his own and by himself. He was intensely human, and yet he 
was distinguished from other men, and even from all men of his 
own profession. His modes of life and study and of appeal to 
men were peculiarly his own. He was not trained to think or 
speak or act in the grooves of other men, but according to his own 
will and following his own methods. There is a natural differ- 
ence in the minds of men. They are not constructed, except in a 
very general way, on the same model. Some minds are iridescent, 
where others see only a monochrome, as the poet discovers and 
expresses things hidden from minds of a duller temperament. 
Even if it were granted that there is no such mental attribute as 
genius, still Henry Ward Beecher certainly exhibited mental qualities 



63 

of a higher strain than one found in multitudes, even of cultivated 
men. With eyes ever open, with ears ever listening, he saw that 
which js enchanting to the eye and heard that which is attractive to 
the ear, — sights to which common eyes are blind, and sounds to 
which common ears are deaf. 

Mr. Beecher's mind seemed to have inexhaustible resources, 
ever ready to overflow. He did not repeat himself in thought or 
expression. His intellect was a living stream, running with ever 
fresh and sparkling waters. He was like the rushing brook of 
spring-time, impatient of restraint, pouring wildly and luxuriantly 
over its banks, and flooding the furrows along its brink. His 
sermons were not built after the recognized rules of homiletics, but 
they touched the heart, and vibrated with the pulse-beat of human 
nature. 

No truer patriot walked beneath our country's flag. He under- 
stood our government thoroughly, and loved it. In the stormy 
days of the war of the rebellion he visited England, and ad- 
dressed many assemblies on the existing crisis. He found a 
dispassionate hearing, where a professed statesman or a politician 
would have been neglected or misunderstood. And it is safe to 
say that his clear statements of the nature of our government and 
of the crisis which prevailed had an influence to enlighten the 
British people, and to plead our cause before them with an efficiency 
and success which no words of our praise can adequately express. 

The name and fame of Henry Ward Beecher have been known 
to every one, north and south, east and west. Perhaps no name 
of a citizen of this country has been held in so general regard. As 
a preacher and lecturer no one has been sought more eagerly or 
heard more enthusiastically. He has held a place in the hearts of 
the people rarely secured by any public man. He has spoken 
peace to multitudes in affliction, warning to the young, encourj 
agement to the doubting, and hope to the despairing. 

No preacher in America has had, for so long a period, so large 
and sympathetic an audience. And side by side with the names 
which shall never die, — great in speech, in action, in benevolence, 
in influence, — will go down to posterity the name of Henry Ward 
Beecher. 

S. F. SMITH. 

Newton Centre, Mass. 



64 

DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

MR. Beecher was too large and versatile to be summed up in a 
few sentences. That he was, take him all in all, the very great- 
est of modern pulpit orators, I have always maintained, and probably 
there was never a pulpit orator so many-sided in his gifts. There 
was something colossal about him. Pettiness was utterly foreign 
to him ; his wit, his imagination, his analysis, his vocabulary, his 
courage, his aims — all were grandiose. He broke with current 
theology, not by the critical processes of the student, but merely 
because it was too narrow to contain him, too restricted to give 
sweep to his generous impulses and large aims. He was a tree of 
vigorous growth, and burst the bark on all sides. For his spirit, 
his work, his rare genius, his unapproached greatness as an orator, 
his courage in great crises, I have ever had the deepest respect and 
reverence. He was one of those men of whom Dean Stanley 
speaks as belonging to the orde'r of Samuel the prophet, — men 
who connect the past with the future, and make of themselves 
bridges for the passage of multitudes. 

EDIVARD EGGLESTON. 
Lake George, N. Y. 



MR. JOAaUlN MILLER. 

SINCE the great event which shocked the world, I have listened 
to the public heart, and find that it beats entirely in sympathy 
with the illustrious dead ; so that there is no need of my hand in the 
proposed memorial. Still, if I could lay one single granite thought 
toward the rearing of his tomb, such as he was wont to utter, 1 
should do it ; but I am silent before his sublime utterances. Yet, I 
will bluntly say this : Henry Ward Beecher was a true man, a good 
man, a guiltless man, if ever a guiltless man walked this earth. I 
lay this testimony upon his tomb proudly, fearless of contradiction. 
As to his goodness, his glorious courage, his divine audacity of faith 
in God and man, there are no two opinions now. There should not 
be, there shall not be, of his integrity and purity. 

JOAQUIN MILLER. 
San Francisco. 



65 



FOR THE LAST TIME. 

(Plymouth Church, February 27, 1887.) 

THE preacher's evening task was done, 
The crowd had gone away, 
But something pleaded with his heart 
A Httle while to stay. 

For him alone the organ pealed. 

For him alone the choir 
Sang soft and low, in sweet accord. 

The song of his desire. 

'' I heard the voice of Jesus say, 
' Come, weary one, and rest ' " — 

What prophecy for him was there 
How little any guessed ! 

As lovingly he lingered there. 

Ere yet the music died. 
There came two urchins from the street 

Unfearing to his side. 

The old man bowed, and, lifting up 

A soiled and homeless face, 
He kissed it as a mother might, 

Then turned to leave the place. 

On either side the urchins trod. 

And on the left and right 
A loving hand on either pressed : 

So, out into the night. 

Out, little thinking as he went. 

That never any more 
His willing feet should inward go 

That sacred threshold o'er. 

And it was well : more fit good-bye 

No genius could devise ; 
No thoughtfulness of loving hearts, 

No wisdom of the wise. 



Brooklyn. 



66 

The *' little ones " had always been 

His chiefest joy and care : 
With them alone let him go forth 

And God be with them there. 

And down the future he shall go 

And through the enfranchised land, 
A loving smile upon his lips, 

A child on either hand. 

JOHN IV. CHADIVICK. 



MISS LAURA D. BRIDGMAN. 

I FEEL much sympathy for them that are sore afflicted with the loss 
of Mr. Beecher, who is in a blissful land with our blessed Saviour 
Jesus. He is truly happy at a holy home in heaven. I have heard 
much about him with pleasure and sorrow. 

LAURA D. BRIDGMAN. 
Boston. 



M 



REV. C. A. BARTOL, D. D. 

R. Beecher was my contemporary, born less than two months 
later in the same year. 1 remember what was perhaps in 
Boston his earliest speech, and how ruddy, even as a red aurora, 
was his cheek. How full of a pleasant humor his smile! Into what 
a stainless air his orb seemed to ascend and shine, and wax more 
and more to the perfect day ! If his sky was at times overcast and 
the morning splendor hid, it is a change which, as the world and 
we are made, both nature and human nature must endure. But 
every cloud is a fugitive, all occupation is transient, and the stars 
re-appear. I would fain lay the leaf my pen traces, and aught that 
is true in the sketch my imagination pencils, amid the blossoms on 
his grave, to wither in contrast with what cannot fade. 



67 

If just occasion in any matter to censure him arose, let us make the 
"honorable amend" of owning the plus quantity of his worth. 
To use a word which has been turned out of its proper scientific 
sense, I call him phenomenal rather than great, — a phenomenon 
like a meteor, a breeze of emotion, an oratorical cyclone. As 
statesman or theologian, he was nothing if not on the jump. Never 
neutral, he provoked opposite opinions at his death, yet possessed 
in his traits the unquestionable excellence without which no man 
can attach to himself such warm and so many friends, hold a 
million watchers in spirit with the actual crowd near his sick-bed, 
and draw, as sun and moon do the tides, abounding praises over 
his unshrouded remains. 

In a common hope, we bid thee hail and farewell. Very pleasant 

hast thou been to me, my brother. Thy love was wonderful ; and 

where that is so much as was thine, the Lord in mercy still opens 

the door. 

C. A. BARTOL. 
Boston. 



GENERAL NEAL DOW. 

IN undertaking to contribute to this memorial to Henry Ward 
Beecher, I am greatly embarrassed in this : that I can say nothing 
of him that is not already known to those who read in all languages. 
To say that he was one of the most conspicuous figures in America 
for many years ; that he was one of the most influential men of his 
time in many ways, though never holding office ; that he was one 
of the foremost men in the pulpit, on the platform, and in the press 
in influencing public opinion upon all important public and social 
questions, is to say only what the world already knows. All this 
prominence was due only to his wonderful powers of mind, which, 
by common consent, were regarded as equal to those of any other 
man of this century. Few men of our time will be remembered so 
long as he, and no name will go down to a more distant future 

than his. 

NEAL DOlV. 

Portland, Maine. 



68 

MR. JOHN T. RAYMOND. 
(written a week before his decease.) 

HENRY Ward Beecher was a man of the people, grand, eloquent, 
and sublime. His fame will rest upon his being the friend 
of the downtrodden ; the great Liberator ; the one who, fearless 
and almost alone, began the fight, and lived to see the ranks swell 
into an army with victory perched upon its banners. Great patriot 
that he was, he proved his greatness by his readiness to soothe the 
vanquished by kind words and acts that endeared him to all who 
felt the influence of his magic power. His name and noble works 
will live more durable than the marble shaft that will mark his 
final resting-place, — a spot that will be as hallowed and loved as 
the tomb of Lincoln. 

JOHN T. RAYMOND. 



ELIZABETH BLACKWELL, M. D. 

I have always thought of Henry Ward Beecher as belonging to the 
advanced ranks of Christian warriors in the lifelong battle of 
right against wrong, of justice against injustice. 

My first knowledge of Mr. Beecher's prowess was in the old anti- 
slavery struggle, when he stoutly battled for a weak and oppressed 
race. My later knowledge of his brave manhood is in that still 
more arduous struggle with the deadliest form of slavery, — the de- 
basement of woman. I have, too, always recognized that wherever 
the cause of the weak, the poor, the ignorant, or the oppressed 
needed a strong and fearless advocate, one would always be found 
in Henry Ward Beecher. 

The loss of such a soldier of Christ must be deeply felt in the com- 
munity amongst whom he had so long dwelt, and I sincerely sym- 
pathize with their heavy loss. But we should all take courage from 
the joyful fact that the great moral evolution of humanity depends 
on no individual worker, — all the good that Mr. Beecher has done 
still lives, and others will bear on the standard that his hands no 
longer grasp. 



69 

Therefore, rejoicing in all the good work that it has been his 
privilege to accomplish, and believing that he still lives to carry on 
more, they are words of triumph rather than of mourning, words of 
encouragement to labor on zealously in the paths he has made plain, 
that I am disposed to utter. For the life and works of every good 
man will hasten the dawn of that brighter day whose faint, far-off 
gleam we already see on the distant horizon. 

ELIZABETH BLACKIVELL, 

Hastings, England. 



MR. BILL NYE. 

I CAN hardly hope to add to the true and beautiful things that have 
been said of Mr. Beecher since his great heart was stilled. Men 
of all climes and all creeds have vied with each other to pay deserved 
tributes to his ability and his worth. 

It was left for Henry Ward Beecher to demonstrate that holiness 
and humor might go together. He was the first preacher to dis- 
cover that God made the gay as well as the grave, and to answer by 
his life the gloomy query, "Why should the children of a King 
go mourning all their days ? " Mentally he fulfilled Coleridge's 
requirements for genius, for he carried the freshness and feeling 
of childhood into the powers of manhood. 

Mr. Beecher not only taught the people, but he taught the pulpit 
that the preacher must first get near to his people and then he may 
mildly rebuke them. He learned the lesson of humanity by study- 
ing people more than books, and his sermons were less redolent of 
musty libraries than of broad fields and beautiful meadows. 

While other strictly orthodox civil engineers and saintly survey- 
ors corrected the boundaries that defined their creeds, Mr. Beecher 
ignored the line fences and helped himself to God's best promises 
whenever they unfolded themselves. 

But above all else, he let the daylight into the Gospel and made it 
desirable. He pulled away the shutters and made the owls and 
vampires of superstition go elsewhere. 



^ 



70 

That is the reason he had to put folding-chairs and camp-stools in 
the aisles of Plymouth Church, while other houses of worship were 
mainly occupied by the choir. He was a human teacher talking to 
humanity in a language it could understand. He was among the 
first to discover that fun was not artificial, but made by the same 
hand that gave humanity the tear. 

Henry Ward Beecher is dead, but his work will mark this century 
for ages to come. He was the apostle of peace, good- will, and good- 
humor, and his keen satire populated oblivion with the false and low 
spiritual hosts of hypocrisy. He taught this generation that sorrow 
will crowd itself upon us early enough and often enough without 
our seeking it out, but that we owe it to ourselves and to those 
about us to cultivate a joyous spirit. 

Even in death, with the snowy-haired men and women of Brook- 
lyn about him, — men and women who came to Plymouth first to lis- 
ten to the boyish pastor of years gone by, — Mr. Beecher taught the 
Christian world that the gloom of the grave need not be enhanced 
by the somber surroundings which man's ingenuity has given to it. 
That is the gospel of gladness that Henry Ward Beecher came to 
preach, and it is the only gospel that will save those who are really 
worth it. 

BILL NYE. 
Asheville, North Carolina. 



MR. EASTMAN JOHNSON. 

1AM glad enough to add my name to the great and heroic things 
that Mr. Beecher has done and was always ready to do, and so 
is every citizen of this land, I am sure, who knows anything of his 
one single-handed enterprise in England in our time of war. For 
that alone any man in our northern country who has a heart will 
place Henry Ward Beecher's name high among our noblest heroes. 
I am very sensible of the sudden and immense loss to our land in the 
death of a great and powerful man, whose voice, truthful and strong 
and always for the right, whether in theology, morals, or politics, 
was heard in the land from end to end. 

EASTMAN JOHNSON. 
New York City. 



71 



HENRY WARD BEECHER. 

HIS MANY-SIDED CHARACTER AND GENIUS. 

♦ 

EARLY DAYS AT COLLEGE. 

IN college, at Amherst, Henry Ward Beecher was two years ahead 
of me, with twice that difference in our ages. In his senior 
year (1833-4), as I well remember, he roomed in the old North 
Dormitory, on the spot now occupied by Williston Hall. His chum 
was Orson S. Fowler, afterward the famous phrenologist. Spurze- 
heim had made a great stir in America, and had died in Boston only 
a little while before (November 10, 1832). Beecher and Fowler were 
ardent champions of the new science. Their room was set off with 
phrenological busts and charts. In mental and moral philosophy, 
Beecher then took up the phrenological terminology which he ever 
afterward adhered to. He localized our human faculties, emphasiz- 
ing their physical basis and environment. He was also an enthusi- 
ast in Professor Edward Hitchcock's department of natural history — 
especially botany, mineralogy, and geology. He had a lively sense 
of the supernatural, but of the supernatural as revealed in natural 
forms and forces. He had his own way of expressing religious feel- 
ing and of doing religious work, but was always warmly on the 
side of whatever he considered right and manly. 

It is idle to inquire what he might have accomplished in the more 
exact and severer studies of the college curriculum, had he been 
compelled, or persuaded to do his best in them. Mathematics he 
disliked and neglected. In the auction, then usual at the end of the 
college course, Beecher's copy of ''Conic Sections " was put up as 
''a clean copy, with the leaves uncut." Of Greek and Latin, as 
afterward of Hebrew, he probably never tried to know much. He 
cared little for the niceties of linguistic scholarship. Comparative 



72 

philology might have interested him had his studies led him in 
that direction. As it was, he cared more for comparative anatomy 
than for comparative philology. Political economy would no doubt 
have been a favorite study, had it then occupied the position it now 
does. Butler's ''Analogy" was probably the most thoroughly 
mastered of all his text-books. He was far enough from being 
indolent, but he never worked methodically. His reading took a 
wide range, and he had a quick and easy way of getting what he 
wanted out of a book. His forte was oratory, and decidedly the 
oratory of improvisation. He could think, and think best perhaps, 
upon his feet. Storm and contradiction only made him more 
brilliant and forceful. He was, by all odds, the best debater of his 
college generation. 1 should be glad to know how he acquired his 
mastery of the English language. His style certainly suggests no 
one model. His genius made him an artist after a fashion of his 
own. He needed only a good, vigorous vocabulary. And the four 
books which probably helped him most in this regard were the 
Bible, Shakespeare, Milton's '* Paradise Lost," and Bunyan's *' Pil- 
grim's Progress." * 

Religiously, he had a great deal of hearty sympathy with the type 
of revivalism then popular. But he threw himself with special enthu- 
siasm into the reformatory and humanitarian movements then just 
beginning to agitate the country. His father's ** Six Sermons on 
Intemperance " had begun to do for one great object what his sis- 
ter's *' Uncle Tom's Cabin" was destined, some twenty years later, 
to do for another great object. 

When I came to New York, as Professor of Church History, in 
1855, Mr. Beecher had been eight years in Brooklyn. In the thirty 
or more years that followed, I could seldom hear him preach. But 
if the real tone and temper of a minister may be inferred from the 
tone and temper of his people, I have abundant reason to think 
well of the Plymouth preacher and pastor. It so happened that I 
occupied his pulpit much of the time during his absence in Europe 
in 1863. There must have been a good deal in my preaching to 
test the genuine catholicity of the congregation. But 1 was never 
more kindly treated by any people, or more generously commended 
by any pastor. He said he was not at all sorry the congregation 
had imbibed so much orthodoxy during his absence. 



73 

But his sturdy patriotism is that for which he will be longest and 
most admiringly remembered. Of the old Puritan stock, he was 
an American through and through, out and out. He had no Euro- 
pean affectations — French, Anglican, German, or any other. He 
recognized in our national history a new democratic evangel. In his 
opinion, not Plymouth Rock only, but Liberty itself was struck by 
the shots that were fired at Sumter. Outside of the army, outside 
of the Government, no Northern man did more than he for the 
Northern cause. What he did for us in Great Britain, in the supreme 
crisis of our national struggle, can never be forgotten. Nor will it 
be forgotten that, when the war was over, he was one of the first, 
and one of the heartiest, to welcome back the returning prodigal. 
It was a rare, great, brave heart that ceased beating in Brooklyn on 
that eighth day of March in 1887. 



ROSIVELL D. HITCHCOCK. 



New York City. 



HIS INTELLECTUAL BRILLIANCY. 

AMONG the general and elaborate estimates of the character and 
influence of Henry Ward Beecher, I should like to speak of 
two incidents — one of them personal — which illustrate his traits. 
No man in our generation was more sympathetic and helpful, more 
generous of time and effort. I am one of thousands who can testify 
to his timely aid and encouragement. At a period when he was at the 
height of his powers and his fame, when literally every moment of 
his time was engaged, when every word of commendation from him 
weighed (to imitate one of his own phrases) with the public a ton, he 
volunteered to write a preface to a little volume which never would 
have been published but for his suggestion. At that moment an 
introduction from Mr. Beecher was a prophecy, almost a guaran- 
tee, of success. I knew him then very slightly, so that his offer was 
an illustration of his common good-will and overflowing kindness 
of heart. When the book was in the press, his introduction was 
waited for. Mr. Fields wrote to know why it was not forthcoming, 
when the fact was disclosed that a long introduction had been 
written and sent by mail and lost in the transit. It was very 



74 

anrxoying, and must have been specially so to Mr. Beecher, who 
was overwhelmed with work, had literally not a spare moment, 
and who felt, I have no doubt, as kindly as any author does, the 
disagreeableness of having to write over again a thing of that sort. 
But he promptly wrote and forwarded a second introduction, — a 
most agreeable little paper it was, — and the only satisfaction I ever 
knew he had in it was in saying that it was not half so good as the 
first. 

The other incident illustrates his intellectual brilliancy. He was, 
I think, never dull. Even in repose, in the most unexciting inter- 
course, his mind played with constant lambency, glowed, one may 
say, with humor, and flowed along the channels of talk, a stream 
sparkling in the sun, without effort. But when he was aroused, his 
powers became of quite another kind, and there seemed to be in his 
arsenal every intellectual weapon ever given to man. There is no 
exaggeration in saying this. Mr. Beecher on the platform, and 
excited, — either by opposition, which roused the lion in him, or 
by the cause, which evoked the deepest emotions of his soul, — 
was a marvel. I heard him deliver once one of the foundation dis- 
courses on preaching to the theological students at Yale. It was 
an address of very considerable power, suggestive, reminiscent, 
witty, full of the wisdom of experience ; but the great intellectual 
display came afterward, when he said that he would try to answer 
any questions put to him. Of all people to ask uncomfortable and 
insoluble questions, I suppose that young theological students, 
freshly familiar with all the dogmatic niceties and doubts of the 
books, are the most troublesome ; and Mr. Beecher, who always 
freely laid himself open by great breadth of statement, was a most 
delightful target for their ingenuity. The first question keyed him 
up to the keenest enjoyment of the situation. For some three- 
quarters of an hour he stood there, alert, excited, but never more 
completely master of all his powers, and replied to the questions 
thrust at him from every side in rapid succession, — questions of every 
conceivable sort, in theory, practice, and speculation. His replies 
were always brief, and they came as quick as a flash of lightning. 
I never saw before or since — for it seemed as if you could see his 
mind flash — such an intellectual display. He was witty, sarcastic, 
subtle, humorous ; his replies went to the mark like a bullet ; 
they were commonly the very essence of common sense. But the 



75 

marvel was in the agility of his mind, turning instantly to a new 
question shot at him without warning, and without an instant's 
hesitation in his answer. The answer was not always a perfect 
solution; when you thought it over, it was sometimes a witty 
evasion which turned the laugh upon the interlocutor, but it was a 
flash that did the work for the moment perfectly. As he stood 
there all aglow, turning quickly from side to side, perfectly calm 
and yet nervously alive from his head to his feet, a curious smile 
wreathing his lips, and his eyes flaming and dancing, I thought I had 
never seen such a complete fusion of the physical and intellectual 
man. Not to debase the figure by a too suggestive simile, he was like 
a single man against a host, receiving and turning aside a hundred 
arrows on his shield, or like a juggler keeping in the air and toss- 
ing back a score of balls, with that marvelous dexterity which, 
even in a juggler, seems to be a half-intellectual quality. The readi- 
ness of his replies to questions so diverse, subtle, and unexpected 
was wonderful, but their aptness made the display altogether mar- 
velous. So far as I know, this age could not match Mr. Beecher's 
intellectual brilliancy on such an occasion. 

CHARLES DUDLEY IVARNER. 
Hartford, Conn. 



HIS UNIVERSAL PHILANTHROPY. 

IN attempting to write of the character and public services of the 
late Henry Ward Beecher, I am met by many formidable difficul- 
ties, chief among which is his almost universal recognition by the 
civilized world as the greatest preacher, philosopher, and humani- 
tarian of the age. His contemporaneous fellow-citizens, young and 
old, are so familiar with the grandeur of his uttered thoughts — their 
wisdom, eloquence, and truthfulness — that to speak of them seems 
like anticipating the grateful tribute of another generation. 

Are we, of the present day — with the memory of his transcend- 
ent affection for the entire human family, free and bondsmen, 
with his noble and impressive figure still standing, as it were, in 



76 

our midst — fully able to speak of him with the calmness which his 
inspiring presence prompts ? No ! for it may be said that we have 
assisted at the making of that truly great man's history, and that it 
is already written on our grateful memories. If, therefore, the 
writer of these few lines has availed himself of the present occasion 
to add the testimony of his own personal admiration, it is not in 
the belief that he can add aught to the knowledge of the reader. 

One of the most engaging beauties of Mr. Beecher's philanthropy 
was its universality. Unlike so many of his theological coadjutors, 
his humanity began far below the level of the human race, and 
reached the humblest animal creations. The writer enjoyed numer- 
ous opportunities of bearing witness to this beautiful characteristic. 
By his preaching and example, he enunciated the moral axiom that 
the church, through the medium of its restraining influence, cannot 
be better employed, in public and private life, than in denouncing 
cruelty, and teaching its friends and auditors to be humane. 

Many there are who expatiate on the value of a human soul, 
and leave it to be inferred that the whole solar system, along with 
the lower half of animated nature, are of less importance. Years 
ago, a minister of the Gospel, desirous of putting a stop to an 
unchristian-like ** sport " which flourished with peculiar persistency 
in his parish, requested his parishioners and their friends to attend 
church, on a certain day in Easter, to listen to a discourse on an 
interesting subject. They came, of course. He chose for his text 
that passage in St. Mark where Peter is spoken of as bitterly weep- 
ing when he heard the cock crow ; and employed such eloquence 
and pathos, and made such a judicious application of the subject, 
that his hearers from that day abandoned the unchristian practice. 
Will any one say that this minister went out of his province in 
descanting on such a theme? Speculative points of faith are very 
well, but is not the best preacher he who, by his discourses, best 
promotes the practice of the Christian virtues ? Such a man was 
Mr. Beecher. He held that no preacher of the Gospel should 
cease to denounce cruelty in every form until it was banished ; no 
priest should grant absolution to a cruel man until he had done 
penance for his merciless deeds. 

Again, the patriotism of Mr. Beecher knew no bounds. It was 
visible in the burning imagery of his intellectual power, — in the pul- 
pit, upon the platform, in society, even upon the very streets and 



77 

highways of his country, — wherever his commanding voice could 
be heard. During the dark and bloody night which menaced the 
integrity of his nation's government, he stood like a rock upon the 
ocean's shore, holding aloft the glowing torch of American liberty 
and loyalty, making apparent to his erring fellow-countrymen the 
dangers which confronted them. 

In assigning to Henry Ward Beecher an appropriate position 
among illustrious Americans, the mind is instinctively directed to 
that immortal group of which Washington was the towering 
central figure. One century of national existence now slumbers 
amidst the ruins of the past, without having given birth to another 
citizen of the colossal, intellectual, and philanthropic proportions of 
that great American divine whose loss the whole country realizes. 
Can it be safely predicted that the one upon which we are just 
entering will produce his counterpart ? It is not permitted to us to 
anticipate the verdict of another century, but believing, as we do, 
that human genius has its finite limits, we may be pardoned our 
skepticism. 

HENRY BERGH. 
New York City. 



AS A HUMORIST. 

^^'•-TpHE gravest nations," says Landor, ''have been the wittiest, 
1 and in those nations some of the gravest men. In England, 
Swift and Addison ; in Spain, Cervantes. Rabelais and La Fontaine 
are recorded by their countrymen to have been reveurs. Few men 
have been graver than Pascal; few have been wittier." So Henry 
Ward Beecher's humor was part and fiber of his earnestness. I 
think he never felt the burden of being ''humorous." He was not 
rendered preternaturally solemn by the dreadful consciousness that 
something "funny" was expected of him; and so he never 
seemed to pump up his jokes or his light, laughter-compelling 
sayings. If he did, — for no man knows how much heartache a 
laugh may hide, — the pumping was so delicately done by hidden 



78 

machinery, that the stream of his humor flowed as from a perennial 
fount of unfailing good-nature. He did not use his humor merely 
to create a laugh. It was part of his work — part of himself. It was 
natural as sunshine, in the social circle, on the platform, or in the 
pulpit; it was bright, restful, reverent, because of its very earnest- 
ness. Behind every laugh, in lecture or sermon, lay some ambushed 
truth that thrust itself upon you as the laughing skirmishers that 
lured you to its front passed away. He w^s a Carlyle's man, who 
**sang at his work, marching always to music," so that his efforts 
to be useful were ''uniformly joyous, a spirit all sunshine, graceful 
from very gladness, beautiful because bright." 

It was because his humor was so much an unconscious part of 
himself that one despairs of reproducing it. The task is difficult, 
and indeed is in most instances a failure ; note the many poor 
stories already credited to Mr. Beecher by well-meaning narrators 
who have attempted to translate untranslatable ''Beecherisms." 
Take away the rest of the sermon, take away the company, the 
circumstances, the time, the argument or the conversation that 
called forth the jest or story, — take away from it all the preacher him- 
self, and too often you have left Hamlet out of the play. 

It was his gift — an uncommon one — to be humorous without 
being ill-natured. He preferred to laugh with a man, rather than 
at him. It is said of Charles Lamb, that he had suffered so much 
himself that he felt intolerance for nothing. Mr. Beecher had all of 
the gentle Elia's love for humanity that made his humor warm- 
hearted and tender. He could say biting things ; he could shoot 
hissing shafts with points as keen as the lancet's edge, that rankled 
where they struck like worrying thorns, when in righteous wrath 
he denounced a hideous wrong or assailed some great injustice ; 
but if ever he impaled one man for the mere purpose of making 
another man laugh, I never heard him, and I don't believe any one 
ever did. I have laughed many times at the bright, cheery humor 
that was always bubbling up in his conversation, but I never lis- 
tened with the fearful apprehension that by and by somebody would 
be lanced for the amusement of the rest of us. This freedom from 
fear made his humor immeasurably delightful to his audiences, in 
the parlor or in public hall. The sensitive man, loving humor, as 
he dreaded ridicule, hailed Mr. Beecher's human, hearty jollity 
as a blessing. It is so easy to be " funny," to make people laugh. 



79 

if one has a mind to be heartless. And how cordially do we all 
hate these keen, cynical, heartless, caustic, witty people, the free- 
lances who laugh and make us laugh at the agonies of the poor 
wretch on the wheel ! But not many men can, or at least do, say 
good-natured things all through a lifetime of good-humor. This 
was the mission of Mr. Beecher's humor : to make the dark day 
bright ; to make the long hour short ; to make the heavy burden 
lighter; not to make thetruth more beautiful, — thatcannotbe, — but 
to catch the careless hearts of men, and their wandering thoughts, 
and so lead them to look at the truth and hear it. If, in righteous 
denunciation of national iniquity or individual wickedness, the 
Preacher's thrilling eloquence was a whip of scorpions, the Pastor's 
humor was a healing balm for every stripe when the involuntary 
flagellant humbled himself and cried him mercy. 

ROBERT J. BURDETTE. 
Bryn Mawr, Penn. 



HIS BROAD HUMANITIES. 

IT is the mission of death to glorify. In its presence defects, im- 
perfections, mistakes fall off, and what was intended comes to 
the light. Death wipes the dust from the surface of the mirror, 
enabling us to see its full brightness. So it has been in this case. 
Though Mr. Beecher's great services, civil and religious, have been 
acknowledged, yet, in many quarters, the acknowledgment has 
been made grudgingly, with qualification and abatement. Now 
it is full, cordial, unstinted. The man deserves all the praise that 
has been lavished upon him. He has earned his monument, 
whether it be a bronze statue, a library, a volume of laudation, or 
a devout memory in loving hearts. Even his limitations make his 
achievements more radiant, as showing against what restraining 
difficulties he struggled, and how a spiritual aim kept his current 
clear. 

The cardinal element in Mr. Beecher's nature was feeling. He 
put the heart before the head. His great word was love. His 



8o 

crowning virtue was sympathy. Toward God and toward man this 
exuberant, overflowing affection went forth with a flood that was 
never diminished, an intensity that never cooled. God was a 
father, endowed with paternal attributes. Christ was a brother, 
to whose bosom he wished to nestle close. Man was a child, to 
be pitied, embraced, aided, encouraged. He disliked theology, not 
merely because it seemed to him barren, but because it was un- 
congenial to him. It could not give an account of his enthusiasm ; 
and he disliked theories of society for the same reason. His com- 
passion went trickling along the ground, bestowing itself on beasts, 
flowers, trees, herbs, with a force that swept away intellectual dis- 
tinctions. This has been reckoned against him. It has been said, 
and with some truth, that he made little of the intellectual framework 
of religion ; that he did not strengthen it, but rather weakened it, and 
broke it down. But that he forgot it, or allowed others to forget 
it, can hardly be said. Whenever he had occasion to express an 
opinion on the matter, it was essentially, though with modifica- 
tions, and in popular language, the ancient opinion. He was, in 
belief, orthodox ; but his fervid nature made it impossible for him 
to keep within ''orthodox" lines. More a poet than a theologian, he 
used the speech of emotion rather than that of austere thought. He 
went sometimes into the cellar, but preferred to live in the upper 
rooms where there was light and air, literature, art, society. His 
service in associating religion with these things was immense. To 
make the great words, ''God," "Christ," "the Spirit," synony- 
mous with Love, Fellowship, Freedom, was a great achievement. 
To teach that Inspiration meant Truth was both noble and gen- 
erous ; while to bring dogma before the bar of the natural human 
heart more than compensated for any doctrinal laxity that he may 
have been answerable for. 

To this strong, persuasive element of feeling may be ascribed 
his love of freedom of all kinds. The most prominent shape of 
this at the time of his coming forward was the antislavery contest. 
In this he was one of the earliest, as certainly he was one of the 
stanchest. None were braver, none so efficient as he. But his 
love of liberty was larger than this. It comprehended every form 
of emancipation — mental, moral, spiritual. This man welcomed 
ideas ; was hospitable to new discoveries ; was glad of any fresh 
suggestion of truth, — so glad, that he was not always careful to 



8i 

define its exact boundaries. He did more than enlarge the church: 
he brought it into sympathy with the growing thought of the age. 
Probably no half-dozen liberal preachers did so much as he to widen 
the scope of the divine activity. He had a passion for liberty. Like 
a great reservoir, he took in the running river, the trickling rill, 
the gushing fountain, the dropping rain, and gave them out in vast 
currents of refreshing water. Every cause that promised a larger 
sphere to the energies of men and women commanded his cham- 
pionship and secured his ungrudging advocacy. His service to the 
nation in its hour of darkness need not be repeated here. His 
service to humanity is less conspicuous, but more abiding. 

To the predominance of feeling in Mr. Beecher's composition this 
also is due. He loved men, all men, the souls of men, especially 
the least fortunate, the struggling, the downtrodden. Human na- 
ture he could not believe depraved, whatever he might think of 
human character; and he wanted to encourage its highest aspira- 
tions, though doubtless he had a way of explaining the corruption 
he wished to remove, and some theory of evil not wholly inconsist- 
ent with his professed belief. Indeed, it was the soul of his en- 
deavor to overcome the practical baseness he saw about him in the 
world. Evil, in his view, was an active, not a theoretical power; 
and it was his task not to reason about it, but to meet it. He pos- 
sessed boundless resources of charity, and nothing made him so 
unhappy as the feeling that he was not in unison with the age he 
lived in. He was a true friend of the workingman, sympathizing 
with his hopes for a larger existence, and wishing for him a wide 
outlet into the intellectual world. His own intellectual gifts were 
enormous, and he naturally desired for all men a horizon as broad 
as he himself enjoyed. He had a great deal of '' human nature" in 
him, and, of course, the possibilities of human nature seemed to 
him inexhaustible. A hearty, vigorous American, living in the 
midst of American popular life, and thoroughly convinced of the 
intrinsic superiority of democratic institutions, he sought to render 
them consistent, harmonious, and efficient. With foreign socialisms 
he had no sympathy ; but native aspirations after a more equitable 
society met his cordial approval. 

Mr. Beecher was emphatically a large man — in body, in mind, 
in heart, in soul; a forward-looking man, expectant, sanguine, 
6 



82 

believing. Born and reared in orthodoxy, he kept his place, doing 
his best all the time to break down the limitations of the creed and 
the church, — accepting the broadest interpretations of doctrine, and 
stimulating the highest anticipations of man. His death causes a 
diminution of the active force that urges men onward ; but, fortu- 
nately, the impulse is so steady now, so confirmed, so strong, that 
the departure of no one man can arrest it. Let us believe that his 
work was finished. The spirit of the age will miss the mighty 
voice that gave expression to it; but it is domesticated with us 
now, so that it cannot be removed. We must thank him in great 

measure for that. 

OCTAVIUS BROOKS FROTHINGHAM. 
Boston. 



CERTAIN PERCEPTIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. 

HENRY Ward Beecher was one of th6se few great men whose 
minds have no element of mysteriousness about them. He 
could never have been a pliant courtier, perhaps not even a success- 
ful diplomatist, unless the matters to be arranged were such as could 
be settled to his satisfaction through open dealing and force of will. 
There was nothing secretive in his whole mental organization. He 
was free in the expression of his likes and dislikes, and his opinions 
were fearlessly set forth, with no thought of the possible conse- 
quences to himself. It was not, therefore, a difficult matter to acquire 
a knowledge of his mind and its working : his writings, his sermons, 
and his speeches had nothing of uncertainty or of evasion in their 
composition ; and though I was not often placed in close relations 
with him, the few opportunities I had for personal observation were 
sufficient, in connection with the study of his works, to give me very 
decided and, I hope, correct ideas of his perceptions, his emotions, 
his intellect, and his will in many of their most important manifes- 
tations. To discuss each of these within the restricted limits allowed 
would be impossible. I can only touch upon a few of his percep- 
tional peculiarities as they were exhibited to me. His emotions, his 
intellect, and his will, will be understood by those who did not 
know him intimately, by the study of the works he has left behind 
him. 



83 

Mr. Beecher's perceptions, though perhaps not all of them devel- 
oped to the fullest extent, were entirely free from the slightest degree 
of aberration. The organs through which these elementary facul- 
ties of the mind were brought into action were perfect in structure, 
and capable, therefore, of conveying to his brain correct sensorial 
impressions. Thus his eyes were large and his vision sound in 
every respect till such changes as age induces ensued; his ears 
were well formed, and his hearing was remarkably acute up to the 
last hours of his life. His other special senses appeared to be in a 
state of absolute integrity, and all performed their functions with 
that degree of physiological accuracy that can only result when not 
only the external organs are free from defects, but the cerebral gan- 
glia by which their impressions are made perceptions are also nor- 
mal in structure and action. 

Of all his perceptions, I think his sight was the most highly culti- 
vated and the most strongly differentiated from the ordinary type. 
He had particularly developed it in the direction of color. He was 
fond of precious stones, not because of their commercial value, but 
solely on account of the great pleasure he derived from their varied 
hues and the play of light from their facets and as it was refracted 
in their interior. He told me on one occasion that when a boy 
nothing gave him more pleasure than to take a glass prism, such as 
used to be hung from mantel lamps, and to decompose the sunlight 
into the primary colors of the spectrum on the white wall of his 
room. He regarded the rainbow as the most beautiful of all objects 
in nature, and the opal as the most magnificent and wonderful of 
precious stones. Red was his favorite color, and hence the ruby, 
the garnet, the red hyacinth were greatly admired by him. I showed 
him some beautiful garnets that 1 had dug up near Fort Defiance in 
New Mexico and which were as pure in color and as brilliant as 
rubies, and he was for a moment apparently overwhelmed with 
their beauty. He then told me that such objects had very much 
the same effect upon him as would be produced by a glass of cham- 
pagne — *' a big one," he added, laughing. ** There is something in 
color,*' he continued, *'that affects some of the lower animals and 
which has a corresponding influence on me, but which few people 
of my acquaintance seem to understand : a bull, for instance, is 
excited by a red flag ; I have heard of a dog that was especially 



84 

demonstrative toward its mistress when she wore a blue dress ; and 
there is an instance given by some old writer of a man who always 
had a fit of some kind at the sight of anything of a bright yellow 
color. I pity those poor people who are the subjects of that won- 
derful affliction, 'color-blindness'; I think I would almost as soon 
be totally blind as not to be able to distinguish one color from 
another." 

Again, certain precious stones — among them the alexandrite, a 
magnificent specimen of which I once found him examining at 
Tiffany's — soothed him and disposed his mind to get rid of any 
little cares and annoyances that might be bearing heavily upon it. 
The change in hue that this remarkable stone undergoes from red 
to green and green to red, according as it is viewed by sunlight or 
gaslight, excited in him the most vivid emotions of astonishment 
and even of awe. He appeared to take in through his eyes some 
rare and mysterious emanation, which others could not perceive, but 
which overpowered him for the moment as the intoxicating odor 
of a flower will in some persons produce a kind of mental abstrac- 
tion almost amounting to a state of hypnotism. 

Form, whether in repose or in motion, had no such influence upon 
him as had color, though a horse in action or a vessel under sail 
impressed him strongly. I joined him one night in the box that 
he was occupying at the opera, where he had gone for the purpose 
of hearing * ' Faust," the music of which he greatly admired. During 
the performance of the incidental ballet, he turned his back to the 
stage. '' Such things," he said, " do not interest me. I should look 
at those people if I cared to do so. I am not afraid, although all the 
house would doubtless stare their eyes out of their heads at the 
sight of a minister looking at a lot of ballet-girls. You tell me that 
there is not the slightest indecency about the exhibition, and I am 
bound to accept your dictum, knowing you to be an anatomist and 
physiologist ; but the ' poetry of motion,' as it is called, has, as such, 
no charm for me. I have had glimpses of ballets in my time, and I 
found them very tiresome. So, my dear doctor, look at those bediz- 
ened jades as much as you like, and I'll listen to the music of that 
waltz, while I also absorb the beauty of Mrs. 's jewels." 

He was fond of music, and his ear, though perhaps not trained to 
the full appreciation of harmony, delighted in melody. "\ like 



85 

music with a tune in it," he said to me ; '* something that I can take 
away with me and bring back to my memory when I am in the mood 
for such things." Some songs, especiallywhensungby women with 
rich, sympathetic voices and with the feeling that the subject and the 
music required, never failed to move him and not infrequently to 
bring tears. I remember how upon one occasion he told me, as the 
piece was being played by Thomas's orchestra, that Gounod's 
'* Funeral March of a Marionette'' caused in him such a mixture 
of emotions that he did not know whether to laugh or to cry. 

But at the same time he was not insensible to the " harmonious 
crash " which is so prominent a feature in some musical composi- 
tions. I doubt, however, if the effect produced upon him differed 
materially from that caused by the fall of an immense body of water. 
It was grand, it was magnificent, but to his mind it was not music 
in its best form. 

I know little or nothing of the action of Mr. Beecher's other special 
senses except that they were physiologically perfect. His sense of 
taste, though acute, was not finely developed in the direction of the 
appreciation of table delicacies. I sat next to him at the dinner given 
to Herbert Spencer, and I noticed that he ate only the most plainly 
cooked articles of the menu. Of wines he knew scarcely anything: 
sherry he could not tell from Madeira, or port from Bordeaux; 
champagne he liked just to taste, but his principal drink on that 
occasion was Apollinaris water. His speech electrified his audience 
with its boldness. It was not inspired by any alcoholic beverage. 
It seemed to come forth almost automatically and with an impetus 
that originated outside of his body. I shall never forget the effect 
which his ringing words produced upon that audience, composed as 
it was mainly of hard-headed men who were not accustomed to be 
swayed by their emotions. They rose to their feet, waved their 
table-napkins, and shouted themselves hoarse, not because they 
all approved of the views which he then revealed to them, but 
because of the astounding courage, the wonderful regard for the 
truth as he understood it, and the almost superhuman honesty 
by which he must have been actuated. 

IVILUAM A. HAMMOND, M. D. 
New York City. 



86 



AS PREACHER AND SPEAKER. 

HENRY Ward Beecher was an American phenomenon, a genuine 
New Englander, a Puritan of the Puritans, an Independent 
of the Independents. No other country could have nurtured such 
a genius but the Anglo-Saxon republic ; no established church, and 
scarcely a dissenting chapel in Europe, would have given him a free 
pulpit ; while in Brooklyn he found a congregation of unparalleled 
liberality and unswerving devotion to the end of his life. 

In his native country he occupies a place of his own without a 
rival, and probably without a successor, in the triple role of orator, 
patriot, and philanthropist. 

There were and there are preachers more profound and more 
spiritual, and orators more weighty and more polished, than Mr. 
Beecher ; but it is doubtful whether any generation has produced 
a more powerful popular speaker in the pulpit or on the plat- 
form — a speaker who had such complete command and magnetic 
influence over his audience. He had an uncommon amount of 
common sense, wit, and humor, and a courage of conviction which 
defied all opposition. His imagination was as fertile as that of a 
poet, though he never wrote a poem or quoted poetry. His mind 
was a flower-garden in perpetual bloom, enlivened by running 
brooks and singing birds. He was always fresh and green, and 
rarely repeated himself. He had an inexhaustible store of apt 
illustrations, quick repartees, and amusing anecdotes admirably told. 
He was in profound sympathy with nature and with man, especially 
with the common people. He never lost self-control, not even 
under the greatest excitement and provocation, as when he faced 
those hostile audiences in England during our civil war. His services 
to his country in that momentous crisis, and to the cause of the 
emancipation of four millions of slaves, as well as his advocacy of 
temperance reform, have secured to him a permanent place of honor 
among the benefactors of his race and nation. 

A common friend, Mr. Peter MacLeod, of Glasgow, who induced 
him to delay his return and to make those powerful addresses in 
behalf of union and freedom in 1863, told me that he prepared 
himself for his Glasgow speech by a sound sleep, and could not 
secure a hearing from the noisy assembly till he excited their curi- 



87 

osity by the question, *' Would you like to hear what my wife told 
me when I left America? " Then he broke forth in an extemporary 
eulogy of Scotland that took the hearers captive. ** ' Whatever you 
do, Henry,' she told me on deck of the departing steamer, * do 
not forget to visit Scotland.' And here I am, in the land of John 
Knox, of Walter Scott, and Robert Burns ; the land where every 
valley is a battle-field, every brook a song, and every hill a poem ; 
the land whose memories are as bright as the stars and almost as 
numerous." I quote from memory and cannot vouch for accuracy. 
I have myself witnessed some of his rhetorical triumphs. 1 sat 
at his side when he held a dense audience spell-bound for an hour 
during the General Conference of the Evangelical Alliance in 1873, 
in the Madison Square Presbyterian Church, glorifying the ministry 
of the Gospel above every other occupation. He spoke like a king 
from his throne. I quote the concluding sentences : 

''Men say that the pulpit has run its career, and that it is but a little time 
before it will come to an end. Not so long as men continue to be weak and sin- 
ful and tearful and expectant, without any help near ; not so long as the world 
lieth in wickedness; not so long as there is an asylum over and above that one 
which we see with our physical senses ; not until men are transformed and 
the earth empty ; not until then will the work of the Christian ministry cease. 
And there never was an epoch, from the time of the apostles to our day, 
when the Christian ministry had such a field, and there was such need of them 
and such hope and cheer in the work, and when it was so certain that a real man 
in the spirit of God would reap abundantly as to-day ; and if I were to choose 
again, having before me the possibilities of profits and emoluments of merchant 
life, and the honors to be gained through law, the science and love that come from 
the medical profession and the honored ranks of teachers, I still again would 
choose the Christian ministry. It is the sweetest in its substance, the most endur- 
ing in its choice, the most content in its poverty and limits if your lot is cast in 
places of scarcity, more full of crowned hopes, more full of whispering messages 
from those gone before, nearer to the threshold, nearer to the throne, nearer to 
the brain, to the heart that was pierced, but that lives forever and says, 'Because 
I live ye shall live also.' " 

On the excursion of the delegates of the Conference to Washing- 
ton, I happened to be in his company. We stopped at Princeton 
for a few hours, and as we two stepped out of the car together, we 
were greeted by the venerable Dr. Charles Hodge, the leading 
divine of the Old School Presbyterian Church, with which Beecher 
had little or no sympathy. As they had never met before, I intro- 



88 

duced them to each other, and walked between them, remarking, 
'* Saint to the right, saint to the left, the sinner in the middle." Mr. 
Beecher instantly replied, ''Then you are the chief of sinners." 
Dr. Hodge smiled. We had hardly arrived in the church, when 
the students, who crowded the galleries, cried out, ''Beecher! 
Beecher ! " He was not in the programme which Dr. McCosh had 
prepared, but there was no escape ; he must gratify the audience, 
and delighted them with a characteristic discourse. He humor- 
ously compared Princeton theology with St. John's book : " Bitter 
in the belly, but in the mouth sweet as honey." 

Mr. Beecher was singularly free from sectarian prejudice and 
bigotry, and from his independent, isolated position he recognized 
the good in all denominations, from the Church of Rome to the 
Society of Friends. This catholicity was beautifully illustrated at 
his funeral, where in the midst of choicest flowers and evergreens 
an Episcopal friend read the solemn service of his church. Dr. 
Halliday offered a free prayer, and the quartette sang his favorite 
hymns of Charles Wesley the Methodist and Bonar the Presbyterian. 

Theology was not the passion and not the forte of this remark- 
able man. Feeling this, he properly declined the honor of D. D., 
which his Alma Mater wished to confer on him, and preferred to be 
called simply Henry Ward Beecher. I heard him say once in his 
pulpit, " Theology is nothing but logic, stiffened and sanctified." 
Much of it certainly is no better, and even worse. While some 
divines and preachers build gold, silver, and precious stones on the 
one foundation of Christ, others build on the same foundation 
wood, hay, and stubble, which the fire of judgment will consume, 
but they themselves " shall be saved." Mr. Beecher described his 
theology in his last letter to me (1885) as " evangelical, progressive, 
and anti-Calvinistic." True theology should be as broad as God's 
love and as narrow as God's justice. Who was more meek and 
merciful to the sinner, even his own murderers, and yet more severe 
against sin than our Saviour ? 

The redeeming trait in Henry Ward Beecher's theology, the 
crowning excellency of his character, the inspiration of his best 
words and deeds, was his simple, child-like faith and burning love 
to Christ, whom he adored as the eternal Son of God, the Friend 
of the poor, and the Saviour of all men. 

New York City. PHILIP SCHAFF, 



89 

APPRECIATION OF ART. 

AMONG the many tributes that have been and will be rendered to 
Mr. Beecher, there can be none more appropriate than that 
which recognizes his admiration and fondness for works of art. 
The versatility of his genius enriched alike his orations and sermons. 
Apart from their originality and grasp, they sparkle with a brilliancy 
not surpassed by the gems which he loved to fondle, and which 
answered to his mind as the thought of friend to friend ; for, to 
those so gifted with the power of interpretation all nature and art 
live as the page of an open book. This is the faculty that makes 
the true connoisseur. From such characters as these art looks 
for and receives its highest appreciation and its most generous 
patronage. 

The common observer takes in little more than the surface of the 
picture. The art quality uncultivated fails to comprehend the poetic 
fancy or the artistic idealization. Our capabilities are not to be 
measured by our actual accomplishments. The hand may lack the 
skill to trace with pencil its images and fancies of beauty, but the 
poet and the artist may still be there in soul, lacking only the 
opportunity or the manual training. The ancient Latin proverb, that 
the poet and the orator are born and not made, has its verification 
in the pleasure and joy which their contemplation gives to those 
who love them. 

Few men, in any age or country, have possessed so fully as 
Mr. Beecher that appreciative quality that tells the rapture of com- 
munion with the rare and beautiful. We recall, among his earlier 
popular lectures, one entitled *'The Ministry of the Beautiful," the 
inspiration of his love for that which contributes so largely to his 
own fruitfulness as well as to his buoyant gladness. 

Rev. Joseph Parker, of London, in a loving tribute to his friend, 
says: '*Take him in theology, botany, agriculture, medicine, phys- 
iology, and modern philosophy, and it might be thought, from the 
range of his reading and the accuracy of his information, that he 
had made a specialty of each." The same character of testimony 
might be borne to his imaginative faculty and observation. He was 
a teacher to the multitude, and a companion to those initiated in 
the higher sphere of the sensibilities. 



90 

Such are the true patrons of art, who bring to the work of the 
artist a return more valuable than pecuniary gain or the praises of 
the general throng. Mr. Beecher may be regarded as having done, 
with pen and voice, for the culture of the beautiful, that which 
entitles him to be ranked high in the brotherhood of those who see 
things invisible to the uncultured eye. Having the ear of the com- 
mon people as no other of his generation has had, he brought his 
love of those things as an offering to God, and Art, in his teachings, 
became the handmaid of Religion. 

M. F, H. DE HAAS, 

Brooklyn. 



HIS SERVICES TO THE COUNTRY. 

IF it be the duty of every one of us to disprove the saying that 
republics are always ungrateful, by confessing the debt that the 
nation owes to those citizens who have rendered it great services, 
then I may speak, with no fear of gainsaying, of the public life of 
Henry Ward Beecher — of what he has done for his country and 
for humanity. For he was one of those religious teachers who 
claim the right to apply the principles of Christian morality broadly 
to all the interests of society and vigorously to all its living issues. 

'* How hateful," he cried, ''is that religion which says ' Business 
is business, and politics is politics, and religion is religion.* 
Religion is using everything for God ; but many men dedicate busi- 
ness to the devil, and politics to the devil, and shove religion into 
the cracks and crevices of time, and make it the hypocritical out- 
crawling of their leisure and their laziness.'' These sentences may 
sound like commonplace now, but they were not so forty years 
ago. The kind of preaching to which they point was very uncom- 
mon when Mr. Beecher's voice first began to be heard in Brooklyn. 

It was about this time that the irrepressible conflict for the exten- 
sion of slavery began to wax hot ; and Mr. Beecher flung himself 
with all the ardor of his soul, with all the splendor of his eloquence, 
into the task of arousing the moral sentiment of the Christian peo- 
ple of the North against this national curse. Clear, positive, uncom- 



9^ 

promising were all his utterances for the equal manhood of the 
black man ; for all men he pleaded strenuously and convincingly, 
and always with magnanimous temper. The system of slavery he 
hated, but there was no bitterness toward the men who upheld it. 
He loved humanity more than he hated slavery, and the slave-owner 
as well as the slave was his brother. This one wise word of his 
illustrates his spirit, and may well be pondered by champions of 
other causes : '* They are not reformers who simply abhor evil. 
Such men become in the end abhorrent themselves." 

Yet he would not be recreant to the call of outraged humanity. 
I remember the day when from his lips flashed these words : 

"I would die myself, cheerfully and easily, before a man should be taken out 
of my hands when I had the power to give him liberty and the hound was after 
him for his blood. I would stand as an altar of expiation between slavery and 
liberty, knowing that through my example a million men would live. A heroic 
deed in which one yields up his life for others is his Calvary. It was the hanging 
of Christ on that hill-top that made it the highest mountain on the globe. Let a 
man do a right thing with such earnestness that he counts his life of little value, 
and his example becomes omnipotent. Therefore it is said that the blood of the 
martyr is the seed of the church. There is no such seed planted in this world as 
good blood ! " 

Of course it is impossible for me to give any indication of the 
power with which these words were spoken. It seemed as if the 
very walls quivered with the intensity of the feeling. In the crowded 
church, men's eyes were blazing, and their chests were heaving, 
and tears were falling on the pale cheeks of women ; it was one of 
those exalted moments that do not often visit us on this earth. Some 
of the occasional sermons and addresses of Mr. Beecher, in the days 
just preceding the war, were eloquent beyond all words of man to 
which I ever listened. And the value of the service that he ren- 
dered to his country in that fierce time, and especially by his master- 
ful speeches in England, it would not be easy to exaggerate. 

This, at the least, we may say of Mr. Beecher : that with him 
patriotism was religion ; that he counted the service of his country 
as chief among the services of God ; that he filled his labor for the 
welfare of the State with a spirit as unselfish, as consecrated, as 
religious as that which inspires the martyr and the missionary. 

IVASHINGTON GLADDEN, 
Columbus, Ohio. 



92 

HIS FAME IN FOREIGN CLIMES. 

1HAVE often wished (during my peregrinations 'round and through- 
out the world) that the many thousands of the home admirers 
of Henry Ward Beecher could have some idea of his great wideness 
of fame, which could only be seen and known by extensive travels. 
Indeed his name is a household word throughout the civilized world. 

While in Auckland, New Zealand, I had occasion to go into a 
book-store, and among the first things I saw upon the counter were 
the sermons of Plymouth Pulpit. I remember also on one occasion 
while in London, struggling to gain admission to hear the great 
English preacher, C. H. Spurgeon, when a man thrust me back, 
with the words, '' I had to wait my turn when I went to hear your 
great Brooklyn preacher — Ward Beecher." 

Near the garden of Gethsemane on Mt. Olivet there is an olive- 
tree ; the guide or dragoman will tell you it is known as ''Beecher." 

I know of scarcely a paper or book of note throughout the nations 
of the world in which my wanderings have led me, of high repute, 
in which 1 have not seen his sayings quoted and his sermons reported. 

Whether traveling in Australia, Egypt, India, or Europe, the 
common questions are asked the American tourist, ''Do you know 
Beecher? have you heard him preach? where is his power?" etc., etc. 
Especially was this the case while I was traveling through Great Brit- 
ain immediately after he had made his great speeches concerning the 
situation of our country, which occurred about the close of our civil 
war. It is admitted by those of high rank and influence, there were 
never such patience, eloquence, and platform victory as were dis- 
played on the occasion of his speaking at Liverpool, London, and 
at the great Free-trade Hall at Manchester. 

There is no doubt but that he turned the sentiment of England 
in favor of the North ; and for this great work alone the entire 
country should make a befitting tribute to his memory, and no 
doubt they will. At many of these occasions he literally compelled 
vast audiences (who were thoroughly opposed to his views on the 
subject) to listen to him until midnight ; and this, too, after having 
hissed him for more than an hour, before they would permit him 
to speak. It is commonly known and admitted that these services 
were of the highest importance to the country. 



93 

It seems to me that the greater part of Brooklyn has gone, since 

Henry Ward Beecher has left it, and in my future wanderings I shall 

feel lonesome — not that personally I knew him so well, but that 

his name was so often mentioned in my presence, reminding me 

of home, while yet abroad. 

PHILIP PHILLIPS, 

New York City. 



LOVE OF NATURE AND VERSATILITY. 

No serious and thoughtful person could have lived in this coun- 
try for the past thirty or thirty-five years without feeling in 
some measure the spell of the name of Henry Ward Beecher. It 
was a name that gradually came to stand for a great personal and 
intellectual force, potent not merely in theology, but in politics, in 
sociology, and in all national and humanitarian questions. It was 
a name to conjure with in war as well as in peace, in the arena of 
politics as well as in the precincts of the temple. Thoroughly 
imbued with the modern spirit, and with the American spirit, Mr. 
Beecher was, for nearly fifty years, one of the most considerable and 
active personal factors in our civilization. The influences for good, 
for growth, for development, for nationality, and for the forma- 
tion of robust manly character that constantly went out from him 
in his multifarious activity, it would be hard to estimate. Not an 
enemy of man or of our institutions but had reason to hate and to 
fear him ; not a good cause triumphed but had reason to thank 
him. His service during the war was, doubtless, greater than that 
of any other non-fighting man ; and after the war, he was propor- 
tionately conspicuous in bringing about a real peace. 

Like so many other young men, I early felt my share of attraction 
for this great name. The force which it represented was so broad, 
so human, so many-sided, that we all saw ourselves more or less 
fully typified in it. 

I owe Mr. Beecher a debt as a student of nature. My first 
acquaintance with his mind was through his ''Star Papers," a vol- 
ume which came into my hand one summer day in 1857. This book, 
probably, has more literary charm and value than any other of his 



94 

published works. It shows him mainly as a writer upon nature 
and rural themes, in which field his heartiness, his boyishness, his 
flowing animal spirits, his love of beauty, his lively fancy, and, 
above all, his solvent power of emotion and imagination which 
enabled him to transmute and spiritualize natural objects, had full 
swing. It is largely made up of short papers written during his 
summer vacations, from various rural towns in Connecticut and 
Massachusetts, and is full of the joy in rural sights and sounds which 
such a man has during his brief holiday in the country in midsum- 
mer. It abounds in that peculiar full-throated quality of his, that 
great power of articulation kept well in hand, and touched to the 
finest issues. What charming chapters are those upon *' Flowers," 
**Trouting," ''School Reminiscences," *'A Walk Among Trees," 
''Building a House," "Springs and Solitude," *'A Moist Letter," 
etc. ! They are all sermons, they are all directed to the making 
of life better and happier ; but what breezy, refreshing reading they 
afford ! Every chapter is like an open window or an open door 
that lets the air and fragrance in and the eye and the mind out. 
Mr. Beecher's mind was not fine and compact, like those rarer 
products of nature, but it was large, flexible, fluent, and liberating. 
It was like the great, generous, juicy fruits, that bespeak the health 
and bounty of nature rather than her delicacy. 

I first heard Mr. Beecher speak, about 1859, while living in New- 
ark, N. J. I remember well his theme, "The Burdens of Society," 
and what a pouring shower of tropes and ideas the discourse was. 
Indeed, it seemed as easy for him to talk as for the clouds to rain, 
and he let himself out in the same broad, copious manner. 

When a great man dies, the planet seems a good deal less inhab- 
itable ; the day seems cheaper; life seems meaner. For a long time 
now our politics will seem less significant that Henry Ward Beecher 
is no longer here to take part in them. There is no great popular 
question of the day but suffers in interest and importance that his 
voice can no longer be heard upon it. A man of action, no 
recluse, no saint, — a man to mold and sway the multitude and to 
throw out and set going all the large and generous and patriotic 
emotions, — he was like the earth in spring when all the streams run 
full. How copious, how expansive, how abounding! What a 
stream of sermons, lectures, talks, and writings he poured forth for 



93 

half a century! He was as fluid as the sea, and could on occasion 
exhibit the might and the vehemence of the great elemental forces. 

He was a live man, and to the last showed no tendency to become 
a fossil. Every progressive and liberalizing thought still found a 
hospitable reception in his mind, and was sent forth recruited and 
refreshed. A great force himself, he readily connected himself with 
the great currents of human affairs. Rarely did he ever mistake an 
eddy for the main drift. None saw more clearly which way the 
world was moving. He was in rapport with his race, his country, 
and his times. He was quick to see the force and the value of the 
theory of evolution ; he was quick to see how and when the old 
theology was pinching and galling the modern spirit. He drew 
courage and inspiration from all the renewing and expanding proc- 
esses of nature. He saw how the old must give place to the new, 
and that the young buds are formed before the old leaves fall. He 
was always in favor of more freedom, more air, more light. A 
policy of restriction, repression, and ossification he favored neither 
in theology nor in politics. Theories and doctrines have their day, 
and in all growing things there is always a demand for more room, 
and for fresh sources of supply. How we shall miss him in all the 
arenas where the triumphs of the people have been won ! A great 
soldier in the war for the liberation of humanity has fallen. He was 
always a brave soldier and a conspicuous one, andalways in thefore- 
front of the fight. Perhaps the single word that best expresses him 
is, multitudinous. What a multitude of ideas and impulses he pos- 
sessed! how wide and various his interests! and, when aroused, the 
momentum of his speech was like that of an armed host. And he 
was never more at home than when confronting a multitude of 
people. In these respects he was peculiarly American ; he was 
continental, and not insular. He was the outcome of our varied, 
teeming, onrushing national life. He was American in his freedom, 
his audacity, his breadth of view, and in his cheerful good faith. 
One great source of his popularity was that he represented us so 
well — represented our better tendencies and possibilities. 

No one man is a summary of all good traits and qualities. We 
cannot have in so large a measure the elements of popularity which 
Beecher had without some drawback. The more select artistic and 
literary minds feel a certain want in him on the side of taste and 



96 

self-denial ; and the more meek and devout religious spirits feel a 
want in him on the score of reverence and humility. But these 
defects were inseparably connected with his great merits. The 
work he was made to do was of a large national kind; not a ser- 
vice to the individual merely, but to the people ; not a service to 
taste, but to humanity. He was not for the edification of saints, 
but for the rebuking of sinners. He shed no fme poetic light, but he 
glowed with the warmth of all generous and patriotic impulses. 
He was closer akin to Luther than to Newman ; to Knox than to 
Emerson. His work was to secularize the pulpit, yea, to secularize 
religion itself, and make it as common and universal as the air we 
breathe. Things in closets and in corners, secluded from the light 
of common day, or cherished as too precious for human nature's 
daily food, received little sympathy from him. The saint, the 
scholar, the recluse, each has his place and his work ; so had 
Beecher his. It is very certain we shall never look upon his like 

again. 

JOHN BURROUGHS. 
West Park, New York. 



AS A FRIEND OF THE JEW. 

THERE have been men in history who appeared to the eyes of 
their contemporaries like mountains set on everlasting founda- 
tions. Henry Ward Beecher may more properly be compared to 
a broad river, flowing through the land, perhaps now and then 
overflowing, but everywhere carrying gladness and blessings on 
its waters. His most salient trait was his intense humanity. This 
trait determined his liberal attitude in religion ; this led him to 
espouse the cause of the slave, and made him the ready and eloquent 
champion of all downtrodden races. 

The Jews have a special reason to pay an earnest tribute to the 
broad humanity of Mr. Beecher. As a result, partly of religious 
bigotry, partly of brute social antagonism, a feeling of indiscrim- 
inating dislike toward the Jews as a class remains among people 
otherwise enlightened, and from time to time finds vent in slanders 
on Jewish character and petty acts of social persecution. Happily 



97 

the time has gone by when such persecution could take the form of 
wholesale massacre or pillage and torture, but the spirit of persecu- 
tion still lingers on, and shows itself in a thousand vulgar ways. 
Mr. Beecher's large heart rebelled against persecution in any form, 
and toward the Jews he acted the part of a man and a brother in the 
truest sense. 

In his sermons he did not seek to exalt the New Testament at 
the expense of the Old, but lovingly dwelt on the sublime teach- 
ings of Moses and the prophets, and beheld one continuous line of 
spiritual truth extending through both Scriptures. He spoke in 
glowing language of the character and services of many modern 
members of the Jewish people, and the utterances on this subject 
which are contained in his published addresses, and in his recent 
letter to the President, are among the most just, the most availing, 
and the most seasonable that have been heard for many a day. 1 
doubt not that they will have the effect of opening the eyes of 
many, and that their influence will be felt for years to come. 

Mr. Beecher uttered a grand thought, in his sermons on Evolution 
and Religion, when he said that the '' moral qualities are not only 
divine in themselves, but are constituent letters in framing our idea 
of Divinity"; that we are God-builders; that if we are base and 
cruel, our ideas of God will be base and cruel; if we are fine and 
spiritual, our ideas of God will likewise be fine and spiritual. But 
with equal justice it may be said that the moral qualities are not only 
eminently human, but are constituent letters in framing our idea of 
humanity as expressed in others. An old proverb says, ** Tell me 
with whom thou consortest, and I will tell thee who thou art." We 
may alter this proverb somewhat, and put it as follows : ''Tell me 
what thy opinions of other men are, and I will tell thee who thou 
art." Our own character is the divining-rod which helps us to find 
the gold in the character of others. 

And we may therefore regard the fact that Mr. Beecher rose so 
high above the social prejudices of his surroundings, and the favorable 
opinion which he formed of a people that is still despised by many, 
as an eminent testimony to the gentleness and nobility of his own 
nature. 

FELIX ADLER. 
New York City. 



98 

EARLY AND LATE IMPRESSIONS. 

I FIRST saw Mr. Beecher when he came to New Haven to preach 
during my student days at Yale College. It seems strange to me 
now that this sermon made so little impression upon me. The 
reason was, doubtless, that I had been brought up in the Protestant 
Episcopal Church, and his unconventional manner in the pulpit at 
first repelled me ; but a little later I heard him in his own pulpit 
several times, and became fascinated by his treatment of all subjects 
with which he there dealt. 

What drew me most strongly to him, perhaps, was the fact that 
in those old days of the antislavery contest he was fearless upon 
the right side. Nothing had done more to undermine religious 
belief in me than the feeling that the Christian Church was false to 
its mission, in standing by slavery throughout the country. The 
attitude of Mr. Beecher, so fearless in the good cause, did much to 
counteract this feeling. Then, too, I liked him on account of the 
enemies he had made : certain newspapers in New-York City 
never wearied in pouring contempt upon him, and, very naturally, 
this strengthened my belief in him. 

In those days, too, when the popular lecture exercised an influence, 
his thoughts were strongly impressed upon me and upon many of 
those about me in the lecture-room. 

When the antislavery struggle was becoming every day deeper 
and stronger, Gerrit Smith once said to me, ''Beecher is doing 
nobly: how wonderfully he takes hold of the people : I have always 
tried to keep one arm around the truth and then to get the other 
around the people, and so to bring them together ; but Beecher 
seems to hold fast to the truth, and then get both arms around the 
people." 

At a much later period, after the great struggle was ended, I saw 
him in a different field and from a different point of view. He 
came to Cornell University to preach in the course of University 
sermons, and I was greatly impressed by his power of stating 
important truths so that thinking young men could accept them, 
and by his readiness to throw overboard a great deal, that in these 
days prevents such men from giving much heed to preaching. 



99 

I have noticed in several discourses regarding him, a statement 
that his theology was very defective. Perhaps so, but some of his 
theological statements seemed to me really inspired. He seemed to 
have a deep insight into the great truths of religion and to be able 
to present these to others, opening up at times great, new vistas 
of truth by a single flash. There is no doubt in my mind that 
very many young men who had been repelled by statements of 
doctrine which seemed to them outworn, were brought by Mr. 
Beecher into a more reverent attitude of mind, and a feeling that the 
pulpit had a message to them after all. 

His theology seemed to compare with a great deal of that which 
is presented in the pulpit as a bright, clear, bubbling spring compares 
with a stagnant pool. 

The personal characteristic of Mr. Beecher which impressed me 
most deeply was his intense love of nature. Driving out with him 
on a beautiful day, over the hills looking upon Cayuga Lake, we 
were chatting along pleasantly, when suddenly he put his hands 
upon the reins and said, *' Stop ! don't speak a word ! " and we staid 
there in perfect silence. I heard nothing save the whistling of 
a bird in the neighboring wood. We listened in silence for 
ten minutes, Mr. Beecher being apparently lost in admiration, 
when he said, " I would give a hundred dollars if that bird nested 
within half a mile of my house.*' He gave me its name and 
characteristics. 

On another occasion he had arrived on Saturday afternoon, and 
at once showed much interest in the attempts to make a lawn 
about the University buildings. The next morning we started 
from my house for the University chapel, which was besieged by 
an immense audience. As he kept his eyes upon the ground and 
seemed rapt in deep thought and said nothing, I took it for granted 
that he was thinking over his sermon, and so I kept silence. Sud- 
denly, as we neared the chapel steps, he came out of his reverie 
and said, **Yes, I was right yesterday. I have studied the grass 
on your grounds as we have walked along, and I am satisfied that 
what you need is to sow such and such kinds of grass seed in such 
and such proportions,*' naming the grasses which he thought would 
serve best. These words revealed the fact that on his way to 
meet this great audience his thoughts were not at all directed to 



_J 



lOO 

the sermon which he was about to preach, but that he was entirely 
drawn away to the question of giving a beautiful herbage to the 
University grounds. 

The last time I saw him was when he came to preach the funeral 
sermon of Mrs. Sage. Early in the morning before he left Ithaca, I 
met him driving upon the University grounds with Mrs. Beecher: 
he insisted upon my entering the carriage : it was a beautiful day, 
and his enjoyment of everything about him was that of a boy let 
out of school — a feeling of joy in nature such as I have never seen 
in any other human being. 

This reminds me that General Grant once spoke to me in very 
hearty terms regarding Mr. Beecher, and said, " Beecher is a 
great, noble-hearted boy/' 

To me Mr. Beecher seemed always a born poet. In another 
country, and in other times, he would probably have influenced 
men as a poet rather than as a preacher. 

ANDREIV D. IVHITE. 

Cornell University. 



SYMPATHY WITH THE SHAKERS. 

To UNDERSTAND the light in which the Shakers viewed Henry 
Ward Beecher, it is necessary to know somewhat of their 
very peculiar theological beliefs. Therein it will be seen that whereas 
Mr. Beecher was heretical to Church and State orthodoxy, he was 
orthodox to Shakerism. 

The writer, in company with Elder R. Bushnell, visited Mr. 
Beecher in Lenox, Massachusetts, some fifty years ago ; and Mr. 
Beecher several times visited Mount Lebanon ; views were on 
these occasions freely interchanged, and theological points dis- 
cussed. Whilst Mr. Beecher was a believer in Christ's first 
appearing, the Shakers believe in the first and second appearing of 
Christ. The Shakers claim that the Bible is not the word of God, 
but an imperfect record thereof; that the God of the jews was not 
the very Deity ; that Jesus was not the very Christ ; that Christ is a 



lOI 

spirit from the seventh or Christ heaven — the heaven of heavens. 
From that spirit sphere go inspiring angels to prophets and 
prophetesses, in all nations and races, on all the earths in God's 
unlimited universe of inhabited globes. 

That man's probation extends into eternity ; that the physical 
body knows no resurrection — dust to dust; that God is a dual 
Being — a heavenly Father and heavenly Mother; that celibacy, 
community of goods, and non-resistance or peace are elements of 
pure, unadulterated Christianity. There are many phases of Chris- 
tianity, from rebel Chinese Christianity up to Shakerism ; in all of 
them there are some truth, some good, and some salvation. These 
are some of the elements of the Shaker theological beliefs which 
Mr. Beecher '* looked into." 

How many of these doctrines Mr. Beecher incorporated in his 
sermons is an interesting inquiry ; but we know that, under the 
inspiration of the ** Christ angels," he preached many a good 
orthodox Shaker sermon. He preached salvation of body as being 
included in the salvation of the soul ; and he recognized Jesus — a 
perfect Jew — as the highest type of physical beauty that our race 
ever produced. As did his father before him, he preached and 
practiced health as a Gospel virtue ; believing that, in obedience to 
physical law, the Lord our God will yet take away all sickness from 
the midst of his people. Mr. Beecher was a John the Baptist to 
Christ's Second Appearing — Shakerism. 

Like Theodore Parker, Mr. Beecher assimilated more with the 
Shakers than with any other religious body of people. He taught 
abstract truth as the people were prepared, saying that *' a preacher 
who should preach all the truth would be like a bull in a china shop." 
Shakers attended his church, and read his sermons in their assem- 
blies perhaps more than those of any other preacher. None but a 
cordial, friendly, personal relation existed between Henry Ward 
Beecher and the Shakers, who regarded him as a large-hearted hu- 
manitarian ; a generous, liberal-minded theologian; a prophet of 
good things to come to the whole human race — a John the Baptist, 
not to some individuals, but to a dispensation. 

In the following particulars I understood Mr. Beecher to more or 
less perfectly agree with the Shaker theology : 

In the Motherhood as well as the Fatherhood of the Godhead. 



102 

That the saints will inherit the earth as an inalienable right. 

That land-monopoly is the basis of chattel and wages-slavery. 

That salvation of body is included in salvation of soul. 

That the physical resurrection is a physical impossibility. 

That man's probation is eternal, and that he creates his own 
heavens and hells. 

That other Avatars, or Messiahs, than Jesus have been inspired 
by Christ angels. 

That the Bible is an imperfect record of the word of God. 

Upon these points of Shaker theology, I believe, Mr. Beecher 
and the Shakers were at agreement. 

Mr. Beecher inaugurated a theological war that has spread 
throughout all church organizations in America and England. 
Himself he ''ordered the battle,'' but he summoned ''the young 
men of the princes of the provinces " to do the fighting. The 
battle having been fought and the victory won, Mr. Beecher was 
no longer needed. But he has left a whole army of Beecher veter- 
ans who are far more to be dreaded by orthodox Church and 
State Christendom than its leader was ever to be dreaded. 

The new generation of Beechers will greatly enlarge the bound- 
aries of rational Revelational Theology ; and, Sabbath by Sabbath, 
the people will go to hear new truths from the young Beechers 
that will end in abolishing wages-slavery. As Mr. Beecher loved 
congregational singing, so will his spirit rejoice in the congregational 
preaching yet to be established in the Brooklyn Beecher Church. 

To me, Mr. Beecher was like the saints and prophets of previous 
dispensations, of whom an apostle said, "These all died in faith, not 
having received the promises — the fruition of their own hopes and 
predictions ; God having provided some better thing for us, that 
they without us should not be made perfect." 

Henry Ward Beecher is not yet ascended into the seventh 
heaven ; he is not yet glorified. His work is not finished ; "be- 
ing dead, he yet speaketh " and worketh. But he will stand in 
his lot, with Moses and Elias, and with David, who "hath not 
ascended into the heavens " ; and with the ' ' souls under the altar, " 
who are waiting for Christ to make his Second Appearing to those 
who are, and shall be looking for him, without sin, unto salvation. 

F. IV. EVANS. 
Mount Lebanon, N. Y. 



103 



REMINISCENCES AND INCIDENTS. 



MR. E. P. ROE. 

IT was not my privilege to enjoy an intimate acquaintance with Mr. 
Beecher, yet I can recall some scenes in which he was a central 
figure. On one occasion he and a large party of friends made an 
excursion in the Catskills and returned in the evening to the Trem- 
per House. As one of this party, I had opportunities of conversing 
with him and of listening to his felicitous speech at supper. Dr. 
Bevan, formerly pastor of the Brick Church in New York City, was 
also present. With a number of clergymen he had dined with me a 
few days before and had told a capital story most admirably. I knew 
that if he and Mr. Beecher could be brought together on the hotel 
piazza, they would, metaphorically, ''make sport which would bring 
down the house." (I hope the illustration will be pressed no further.) 
By a little management, this conjunction was arranged. Mr. Beecher 
enjoyed Dr. Bevan's story in his hearty way, meanwhile being fired 
up himself, and a corruscation of wit and fun resulted not easily 
forgotten. He was surrounded by a large group of clergymen 
and their wives who were in sympathy with him as he with 
them, and so he was beguiled into one of his best and most brilliant 
moods. Shouts of laughter rang out on the still June evening, and 
the hilarity of that hour was as good as a week's vacation to the 
hard brain-workers present. In his genial, overflowing humor, this 
many-sided man was a beneficent power. 

Again when on a brief journey with Mr. W. Hamilton Gibson, 
the artist, I met him in the cars, and was interested in noting how 
perfectly at home he was on artistic subjects and works. 

My most memorable interview occurred one June day when Mr. 
Beecher, with a number of Congregational clergymen, visited the 
Rev. Dr. Abbott at Cornwall-on-the-Hudson. The party landed at 
West Point, and Mr. Beecher was put in my carriage and sat on the 



J04 

same seat with me in the drive over the mountains. At times he 
was like a boy just loose from school in his frolicsomeness ; again he 
would show his deep sympathy for nature. He fairly reveled in 
the scenery, and knew the names of the trees and plants on which 
his eyes dwelt in fond appreciation. He was as much at home in 
the Highland solitudes as when electrifying thousands by his elo- 
quence. In brief, he was one of the few to whom genius gives 
the power of almost unlimited insight and adaptation. 

E. P. ROE, 

Santa Barbara, Cal. 



DR. GEORGE H. HEPWORTH. 

WHEN I was pastor of the Church of the Messiah in New York 
City, the conservative current in my character carried me 
out of the ranks of Unitarianism and landed me — nowhere. I 
simply knew for a time that I had left my old religious home and 
was out on the broad prairie without shelter. It was a terrible expe- 
rience, the nervous shock of which I cannot even yet, after fifteen 
years, contemplate without an involuntary shudder. One morning 
my door-bell rang, and three cards were handed to me by the 
servant. My visitors were Dr. William Ives Budington, Dr. Henry 
M. Storrs, and Mr. Beecher. I was so blue about myself, and so 
dazed by the fact that I was all afloat, adrift from my moorings, 
that my first impulse was to excuse myself, and remain hidden in 
my den. I shrank from all human companionship. 

Still, I entered the room where these three gentlemen were seated, 
and was surprised at the greeting I received. Mr. Beecher saw my 
condition of mind at a glance. His intuitions were something 
marvelous. How he did talk to me ! with what tenderness and 
brotherliness and gentleness ! And withal, how full of keen wit 
and quaint and odd remarks his conversation was ! I just sat there 
and listened, hardly replying by a word. I felt like ** a sensitive "^ 
when the mesmerist makes the mystic passes. He promised for 
himself and for the other two brethren, and for the religious body 
which he represented, to stand by me as something more than a 



105 

friend, as a brother, until I could see my way and my duty more 
clearly. And he kept his word. He was my good cheer at a time 
when old friendships had suddenly given away, and no new rela- 
tionships had yet been formed. '' I will be your bishop," he said. 
The old days come back as I write, and with painful vividness. 
1 had a great burden to bear, but Mr. Beecher put his shoulder close 
to mine and helped me more than I can tell. 1 can never forget those 
weeks and months. But they were cheered, inexpressibly cheered, 
by the man who did a thousand acts of kindness like this one, but 
will never be known until we all shall reach another land. 

GEORGE H. HEPIVORTH. 
New York City. 



MR. MELVILLE D. LANDON (^'Eli Perkins"). 

MR. Beecher will never be called a humorist, but his wit and 
humor was as keen as his logic. He never strayed away 
from his train of thought to gather in a witty idea to illustrate his 
sermons. Neither did he avoid wit. When a witty idea stood 
before him, he grasped it, and bent it to illustrate his thought. His 
conception of wit was as quick as lightning. It came like a flash 
(often in a parenthesis), and it often instantly changed his hearers 
from tears to laughter. 

When some one asked the great preacher why the newspapers 
were always referring to the Plymouth brethren, but never spoke 
of the Plymouth sisters, he could not help saying: 

*' Why, of course, the brethren embrace the sisters! " 

Mr. William M. Evarts was once talking with General Grant about 
the great Brooklyn divine, when suddenly the distinguished lawyer 
musingly asked : 

"Why is it, General, that a little fault in a clergyman attracts 
more notice than a great fault in an ordinary man?" 

'* Perhaps," said the General thoughtfully, '*it is for the same 
reason that a slight shadow passing over the pure snow is more 
readily seen than a river of dirt on the black earth." 



io6 

In all of his humor, Mr. Beecher never harmed a human soul. 
His mirth was innocent, and his wit was for a grand purpose. 

The kind heart of Mr. Beecher, and the effect of his sweet life 
upon humanity, can be no better illustrated than by a little incident 
which happened one cold, wintry morning, as the kind-hearted 
preacher was buying a newspaper of a ragged, shivering Irish 
newsboy. 

**Poor little fellow! " sighed the sympathizing clergyman, while 
his eyes moistened, ''ain't you very cold?" 

**I was, sir, before you passed," replied the boy. 

MELVILLE D. LANDON 
C^Eli Perkins"). 
New York City. 



DR. EDWARD EGGLESTON. 

NONE who ever knew Mr. Beecher will ever forget his exuberant 
playfulness or his flashing wit. In playfulness he sometimes 
disregarded conventional restrictions ; but if you will have a great 
man, you must expect the slender fences of bourgeois properness 
to be now and then overturned. He often twitted me in many 
ways on my excessive head of hair. *' You shaggy man, come up 
here," he called to me one Friday evening as his prayer-meeting 
was breaking up. In the severe ordeal of his trial, he one day sent 
two notes to Pastor Halliday, who sat next to me. One of the notes 
warned him that he was sitting alongside '' a dangerous man. He 
is an American ! Witness the growth of his hair ; a soil that pro- 
duces such a crop is over-rich — malarial indeed! " The other note 
warned Mr. Halliday: *' The fires of Calvinism have burned all 
the hair off of your head. Look at your neighbor, and learn a more 
liberal faith." And this in the very midst of one of the most excit- 
ing periods of the trial. 

EDIVARD EGGLESTON. 
Lake George, N. Y. 



107 

MR. ANDREW CARNEGIE. 

THE desire of every visitor to our shores, whether philosopher, 
poet, historian, physician, or statesman, to hear Mr. Beecher 
often led me to Plymouth Church. Matthew Arnold was no excep- 
tion to the rule. After service, Mr. Beecher came direct to us, and 
as I introduced him, he extended both arms, grasped the apostle of 
sweetness and light, and said, ' ' I am very glad to see you, Mr. Arnold. 
I have read, 1 think, every word you have ever written, and much of 
it more than once, and always with profit." Mr. Arnold returned 
Mr. Beecher's warmth — as who could ever fail to respond to it? — 
and said, *' I fear, then, you foundsome words about yourself which 
should not have been written ! " *' Not at all, not at all ! " was the 
prompt response, and another hearty shake of both hands, for he still 
grasped those of his critic. * ' Those were the most profitable of all. " 
Upon another occasion I had gone with a well-known English 
divine to Plymouth Church, and in the party was Miss Ingersoll, 
whom I introduced to Mr. Beecher, saying, '* This is the daughter 
of Colonel Ingersoll; she has Just heard her first sermon, and been 
in a church for the first time." As with Mr. Arnold, the arms were 
outstretched at once ; and grasping hers, he said, as he peered into 
her fair face, '' Well, you are the most beautiful heathen I ever saw. 
How is your father ? He and I have spoken from the same platform 
for a good cause, and wasn't it lucky for me I was on the same side 
with him ! Remember me to him.'' 



ANDREJV CARNEGIE. 



Pittsburgh. 



MRS. JESSIE BENTON FREMONT. 

OF Mr. Beecher in his more public life many are writing from 
larger knowledge, and those who knew him closest tell what 
can be known only to unreserved friendship; but I have one quiet 
recollection of him, so characteristic, so fine, that if I had but that 
one it would be enough to explain the devotion of those who real- 
ized constantly his quick sympathy and his generous consideration 
for the feelings of others. We are on guard against great tests, but 



io8 

the surprise of a sudden small stab finds out the vulnerable point, 
and reveals us as we are ; our nature and that habit of mind which 
has become second nature is suddenly uncovered, sometimes to our 
own dismay, sometimes to our own approval. It was in such a way 
that I saw Mr. Beecher tested by a Southern lady, who intended 
giving public recitations, and had asked me to have him hear her 
recite, and give his opinion as to her voice. Had it been a case of 
merit and necessity I should have felt less unwillingness to tax his 
time, but there was little merit, and absolutely no necessity. She 
was a widow with two little children, but for herself and her 
children both their future and present were made luxurious and 
secure. Her husband's income died with him, but her family had 
large wealth and generous affection, and every detail for her com- 
fortable independence, even to a good income, was securely provided. 
They were not only people of large estates, but proud of their 
historic, honored name ; and Mrs. B. was not let to feel any loss they 
could remove. She was unusually lovely, with a gentle, appealing, 
helpless manner which enlisted protecting feelings. "She is so 
sweet, so gentle ! " was a chorus that always followed her. 

But this sheltered life of obligatory retirement from society 
developed the vanity, the need for excitement which underlay this 
sweet delicacy, and her family were justly indignant when, with 
the invincible obstinacy of an unreasoning mind, she decided to 
give public recitations. " I must have bread for my children," was 
her phrase — as senseless as that of a parrot. She had no concep- 
tion of the anguish of those words — the crowning agony of the 
widowed mother. 

Nor had she the remotest doubt of success, or any idea of what 
lay in her way to public fame. A vision of a lovely, tall, fair 
woman, in long mourning robes, reciting melodious verse to an 
audience who pitied and admired her — that, and only that, she saw. 

In short, her people having ineffectually pleaded and argued, she 
had escaped from them all, and had now come to New York to 
arrange for her debut. There was old friendship between our 
families, and my feeling was to protect hers from reproach. 

I brought her to my own house, where I invited critics and mana- 
gers to hear her read, and they kindly humored her with praises, 
aiding me to gain time until her sister should arrive, who had 



109 

answered me, begging I would keep Mrs. B. amused until she 
could be ready to take her to Europe. But restlessness made the 
elocution lessons a bore. '' Professional" opinion, she said, was 
commonplace and hackneyed ; she wanted some great orator, some 
speaker of distinguished success to hear her — that would be a true 
opinion. And she had fixed upon Mr. Beecher. Hence came my 
unwilling request for a brief visit to him that a Southern friend of 
mine might have his opinion of her voice — that she intended giving 
public recitations — and 1 gave her honored father's name. 

Of course this brought the kindest answer, and next morning 
we were punctually at his house — the Columbia Heights house with 
the grand view. Coming quickly into the drawing-room to meet 
us, his step and smile seemed arrested by astonishment, rising to 
dismay, as his instant perception took in the true Mrs. B. She, 
sweetly, and without emotion, calmly explained her object in 
claiming his attention, and made her routine little speech about 
getting bread for her children. 

It is hard on any man of feeling who tries to lift the real distress 
around him to meet real need. To Mr. Beecher, whose keen sympa- 
thies vibrated with the pain of others, whose daily duties were to 
minister to care and suffering, it brought a shock to see this lovely 
woman, in perfect health, and calm even tone of mind, her costly 
artistic mourning and unfailing bunch of white roses in her belt, 
conveying no thought of want or loss, no comprehension of the 
heart-breaking words she used so smoothly and gently of "getting 
bread for my children." 

I think I know what he felt ; he said nothing, but, taking refuge 
in movement, led us to the upper library where we would be unin- 
terrupted ; that sunny room where, opposite, was the great city, 
and close below the harbor with its crowded life of shipping, its 
ceaseless grand effort from land and sea. 

On this rose the small voice of self-importance as Mrs. B. chose 
out from the volume handed her by Mr. Beecher, 'Mny favorite 
verses," she said; and of all written words proceeded to give, in her 
soft, flattened tones, Shelley's ''Skylark." 

Mr. Beecher had mastered the first shock ; this second one made 
him half-rise from his chair, but with his flashing-quick perceptions 
the wound to his ear was lost in the waves of astonishment and 



no 

pure fun that overran his mobile countenance. By the time the 
gentle execution was ended he had, however, controlled himself. 
He assured the lady that *' her voice was remarkably sweet, soft, 
and fitted to express tender feeling, but that practice under a good 
trainer of the voice was essential." 

" But 1 would rather read with some one who was not a hack- 
neyed trainer," interrupted Mrs. B. 'M would like to hear hoyN you 
read the Skylark." 

For a brief pause Mr. Beecher was quite still. He evidently 
passed into another atmosphere. Taking the little book, but with 
his eyes dreamily looking out of the sunlit window to the blue May- 
day sky, he followed in feeling as in words the song of the lark — 
not reciting, not reading — but giving fit utterance to its spiritual 
questionings and longings. 

It broke upon the charmed air to hear Mrs. B.'s conventional 
mild thanks for his ''patience and kindness." "Not at all," was 
the hearty answer ; '' 1 am glad to do it for you. You have my per- 
mission to refer to me, and to use my name, publicly, for all I said 
of your voice." 

" Oh, no, I never could do that ! " she answered, more emphati- 
cally than she was used to speak. '' You see I am Southern ; all 
my family would be shocked to find I had been to see you. It 
would injure my prospects in the South to use your name. 1 only 
wanted your opinion for myself." 

Mr. Beecher bowed silently, — it was that battle-year which made 
us comrades with him, 1 856, — but gave a kind smJle and nod of the 
head to me as he saw me blushing to tears and dumbfounded by 
such unconscious, tremendous rudeness and selfishness. 

He offered us some flowers, which she accepted with gracious- 
ness, while I brought away this lasting memory of a look deep into 
the springs of a large, sweet nature : his generous sympathy, his 
quick mastering of surprise and disapproval, his tolerance and 
pity for so much weakness, his escape from belittling ideas into 
the upper air of noble thought, his inborn goodness of heart, which 
made him unwilling to wound even in just retaliation. 

JESSIE BENTON FREMONT. 
Washington. 











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